The Birthday Lunch is the sort of novel in which a woman stands at a casement window and drinks a cup of tea, enjoying a private view of a cherry tree and an herb garden. It is a "quiet novel" and, yet, a story which is ultimately about the primary importance
Unsurprisingly, “Some Women” offers readers a panoply of images of womanhood. It begins by hearkening back to an earlier time, when “girls wore waist cinches and crinolines that could stand up by themselves”. But then locates the narrator as being so old that even she is amazed by the number
"You think that would have changed things?" "The answer is of course, and for a while, and never." In interview with Eleanor Wachtel, Nick Hornby discusses the "problem of being divided being two worlds" saying that many of us have a version of this in our own lives. This is true
Such good reading this summer, so far. In other respects, perhaps mine has not been the most productive summer. But it all depends what one puts on a to-do list, doesn't it! What if your to-do list was all about the books in your stacks? Doubleday Canada - Penguin Random
For weeks after reading Frances Whiting's Walking on Trampolines, my vocabulary was peppered with LuluBelle-isms. That's how I thought of the habit that young Lulu and Annabelle had, of mashing-up synonyms to intensify the meaning of each individual word. Gallery BooksSimon & Schuster, 2015 (2013) "I'm starmished," I would
