The word 'goodish' entered my vocabulary thanks to an observation that Carol Shields makes of two female friends in The Republic of Love. (General increased usage of -ish also ensued.) "They love the word ‘goodish,’ as in goodish sunsets, goodish travel bargains, goodish men." The title and cover of Suzanne Sutherland's When
At twenty-eight years old, Priscila Uppal meets her mother in Brazil, twenty years after her mother has abandoned daughter-son-husband. Two decades later, their relationship is a complicated one between near-strangers. They spend twelve days together and the experience is shared in Projection within a framework of movie titles. This organizing
In "Save the Reaper" and "The Children Stay" readers are directed to wonder what young children remember of their parents' shenanigans, but in this story readers inhabit Karin's perspective. Karin is certainly old enough to actively observe and contemplate the events unfolding around her (although from a girl's perspective, so
As with the earlier stories in this collection, readers are cast back in time: by thirty years in "The Children Stay". Readers find themselves on the east coast of the Island, Vancouver Island, but the exact location of the cottage is reminiscent of the way in which the Maitland River
You might think Struan is an unlikely setting for a novel. A town you can walk through in under ten minutes (even on slippery wintry surfaces). Knopf Canada, 2013 "Walking from one end of Struan to the other takes less than ten minutes. If you kept walking south
