“To take up residence in the mind of Mavis Gallant, as one does in reading her stories, is a privilege and delight,” writes Phyllis Rose, to begin her review of Overhead in a Balloon in the March 18, 1987 issue of The New Yorker. She speaks of Gallant’s ability
If you are reading this post because you are part of the #1965Club, and you haven’t heard of Marie-Claire Blais, you are about to wonder how that can be true. (And if you also haven't heard of #1965Club, please visit Karen's and Simon's sites to learn more.) Blais has published
When Whitney Scharer describes her goal in writing The Age of Light, I’m all in. She wants “to present Lee as the complicated woman she was: beautiful and talented, of course, but also flawed and fragile, and it was more important to me to get this right than to
Talk of The Painted Drum (2005), The Plague of Doves (2008) and Shadow Tag (2010) in under 300 words each, with an eye to finishing a project. The Painted Drum is one of Erdrich’s accessible novels (I also recommend The Last Miracles at Little No Horse and The Master Butchers Singing
In which pages are turned, at a faster rate than usual. Character-soaked, but still fast-paced storytelling. Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves (2017) is set in a future in which the dominant culture has determined that the blood of indigenous peoples holds an inherent value for healing. Exploitation and genocide ensue. This
