Stories set in—and revolving around—Vietnam have appeared on BIP many times, like Marcelino Truong’s coming-of-age memoir in translation by David Homel: Such a Lovely Little War (2014; 2015) (his follow-up, Saigon Calling, brought the family to England). Also Robert Olen Butler’s Perfume River (2016) but to say much more
It’s a time of “political and intellectual crisis” in The Little Company. Sound familiar? Drusilla Modjeska’s introduction situates readers in Dark’s depiction of ordinary life in Sydney and Katoomba, in this time of “recession, nuclear threat and more failed expectations” in Australia. The Little Company is Dark’s seventh novel,
Before I post about the new reading year, there are a few memorable reads from my 2020 log that I haven’t mentioned yet. Like Pourin’ Down Rain, Cheryl Foggo's memoir about growing up in 1960s Calgary, in a small and tight-knit Black community. When she was young, she heard
The call for witnesses in The Stone Diaries resonates throughout Shields’ work: “Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses. It seems we need to be observed in our postures of extravagance or shame, we need attention paid to us. Our own memory is altogether too cherishing, which is the
If you’re the kind of reader who particularly enjoys the idea of stories intersecting and connecting, this one’s for you. If you would have enjoyed Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge just as much if the stories had appeared all jumbled. And, if you loved the film Sliding Doors and the
