The laundry hangs on the clothesline in the background, while Alistair MacLeod speaks to his wife Anita about what their life was like when the kids were young. It’s there, in the film “Reading Alistair MacLeod”, that I see Anita patiently waiting, while he pulls out a small stack
Those of you who are reading here now, but not reading Alistair MacLeod’s short stories, will probably only be interested in the first couple of paragraphs after this introduction. Feel free to skip past the section that I've titled The Underneath, written with those who know the story-or other
In Daisy Hildyard’s The Second Body, she shares this admission: “In a technical way, I believe in climate change, but I do not much act as if I do. (I take flights.) I don’t really inhabit it. I have never bought a book with Climate Change in the title
“All of us are better when we are loved.” The film Reading Alistair MacLeod begins with this quotation. It’s a lovely way to summarize his oeuvre. In the film, Colm Tóibín speaks of the process of discovering MacLeod’s work through editing the Modern Library’s Best 200 Writers project; he
Many of the books in my February reading stack also fit with the celebration of independent publishers #ReadIndies hosted by Kaggsy and Lizzy this month: Archipelago Books, QC Fiction, Nimbus Books, Tin House, Duke University Press, and Allery Editions (links below). Later this month, I’ll chat more about independent publications
