Weeks after reading these stories, a glance at the table of contents brings back their characters and arcs in a moment. (With "Flower Watching" and "Eskimos" I also required the aid of the characters' names I'd noted.) These stories stood out, not only as independent narratives but, simultaneously, for the
With chapters named for the days of the week in Street Angel and with specific dates in a given week in Adult Onset, these two novels seem to make ideal reading companions. Ultimately, much of literary fiction is preoccupied with time. Whether it is Molly Bloom's day in James Joyce's
It begins in fog. With Matthew Sweetland hearing voices "so indistinct he thought they might be imaginary". Doubleday Canada, 2014 This scene from the past alerts readers that they should be concerned with the line between the real and the invented, and even more to the point, with how
An excess of short stories in the later part of this year has led to a decision to return to the habit of more often devoting entire posts to collections rather than covering a variety in a single pass (last seen in Quarterly Stories: Autumn 2014) Algonquin Books, 2014
Cristina Henriquez’s The Book of Unknown Americans (2014) Bond Street Books - Random House, 2014 It’s risky, fragmenting narration into a large number of voices, but it’s the perfect format for a novel about the experiences of newcomers to the United States, who can have an astonishing variety
