Could be that "Carried Away" is my favourite Alice Munro story. 1994; Penguin, 1999 Not only because Louisa is a librarian. (But that certainly helps.) "The Librarian’s desk was in the archway between the front and back rooms. The books were on shelves set in rows in the
When Tamara Levine was diagnosed with breast cancer, she began sending e-mail letters to about fifty family members, friends and colleagues, to keep everybody in the loop. Second Story Press, 2012 Almost immediately, these letters took on a great significance in her Healing Journey, offering a kind of
It began when I was a girl, with books like Jean Webster's Daddy Long Legs and Norma Fox Mazer's I, Trissy. These stories invited me directly into characters' private thoughts, via letters written to a trusted recipient and journal entries written for the writer's own eyes. Trans. Katharina Bielenberg
B.I.P.'s Snips are short-hand responses to works; I usually opt for this format when I've read the book without taking many (or any) notes. Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976) Read: Mostly over breakfast, home-baked muffins or bakery-bought rugelach with coffee, perched on a stool in the kitchen, mostly
The Love Letter was longlisted in 1996, the year that Helen Dunmore's The Spell of Winter won the Orange Prize. The idea intrigued me straight away, even before I saw the 1999 film of the same name: a love letter addressed and signed ambiguously, discovered by a 42-year-old
