I heard Madeleine Thien read from this collection in 2001 in a small library theatre in London, Ontario; I recall that she was very gracious and spoke of being honoured to appear with the other women who were reading that night. (I heard Joan Barfoot, Bonnie Burnard and Jane
Although following Finch’s Fortune directly, the fortune only recently received and dispensed, Master of Jalna was actually published more than twenty years before Finch’s Fortune. It’s easy to imagine why the author would have wanted to revisit the Whiteoaks before the events of Master of Jalna play out, to
One remarkable feature of Lisa Moore’s short story writing is her versatility. Sometimes her vocabulary is elevated (consider: koan, ferric, sculpin, recalcitrant, scabrous, and histrionic). Sometimes her subject matter is banal. With characters chewing their fish and chips on Signal Hill with their mouths full. (“Skywalk”, the final work
It’s fitting that a story which includes the visionary figure of Buckminster Fuller is rooted in possibility rather than history: “It is not intended to follow the precise history of what was, but rather to imagine a story that might have been.” This note precedes the novel and sets
In Miss Bianca and the Bridesmaid (1972), the action shifts closer to home, when a young girl disappears the day before a family wedding is to take place. The girl is the niece of the Ambassadress, who is ever-grateful for the assistance and companionship Miss Bianca provides to the
