Massacre, killer, murder: when these words appear on a novel's first page, readers are fore-warned. And, yet, the first third of Sara Taylor's Boring Girls (2015) is a coming-of-age story. "It was becoming more and more apparent that I had been right all along. No one could truly understand me, unless they got
It's with a subtle touch, but Nadia Bozak solidly roots the reader in time and place. House of Anansi, 2016 This is not an easy task, because Shell only grows to the age of seventeen in Thirteen Shells -- across thirteen stories, and childhood is inherently rootless. So the details
Despite its sedate and unassuming cover, Pauline Holdstock's The Hunter and the Wild Girl begins in a rush. Goose Lane, 2015 "With a shriek of splintering boards, the girl breaks into daylight and stands blinded, panting, sucking air as if it were a great hot soup, her chest
In interview with Harriet Gilbert, when meeting to discuss her landmark work The Country Girls as part of the BBC's World Book Club, Edna O'Brien speaks about the relationship in that novel between a young woman and a married man referred to as Mr. Gentleman. Little, Brown and Company, 2015
"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
