“With her book, her roses and her cake she was separated from the other members of the family in a kind of frosty seclusion.” Alayne’s frosty seclusion doesn’t sound all that bad, does it? But the point is that Alayne feels her separateness. And that's not always comfortable. Nor
Having had such a difficult relationship with her mother, Mavis Gallant must have hoped for more from her father. But think of the separateness of the child and father in “Wing’s Chips” (a story with outward similarities to some of Gallant’s childhood experiences). And the outright conflict in “The Rejection”. She
I've worked in a bookstore twice in my life. Between those jobs, the Giller Prize burst onto the Canadian literary scene, in 1994. So when Bonnie Burnard's Casino and Other Stories and Eliza Clark's What You Need were shortlisted that first year, I was still fresh from the store, still returning weekly
Amabel is just a few years older than young Shirley, who lost her young husband Pete when they were newlyweds in “The Accident”; barely married, not yet disappointed. Had Amabel and Shirley been friends, able to discuss their brief experiences of married life, I wonder how their opinions might
The tales are told by Jack Mauser’s wives. Lest you think this could make for a short read, there are five of them. Four of those times, Jack married for love. You might guess what the fifth occasion was, but I bet you wouldn’t have worked a toothache into
