As is fitting for the opening story of Mavis Gallant's second published collection, My Heart is Broken, many themes feel familiar. The question of what constitutes a "good" woman, particularly when she is not a wife. The dilemma of trying to live an interesting life while maintaining a sheen of
In which I discuss the skinny volumes which accompany me on my travels, while the heavier volumes (like Margaret Millar's omnibus of mysteries, like Elizabeth von Arnim's Christopher and Columbus) remain at home. Tiphanie Yanique's Wife appeared from Peepal Press in 2015, after a collection of stories and a novel:
When you've looked up a book title, have you ever been tempted by the other books you've found with the same title as the book for which you were searching? In adding Lori McNulty's debut short story collection to my online TBR list, I discovered several other books with the same
There is less than a year between Jane and Ernestine Kennedy, young sisters who “resemble little Renoirs”. They live with their mother, Mrs. Kennedy, who is so preoccupied with caring for their father, that the girls have a minder, Frau Stengel (their sixth). Jane Wyman in “Das Herz Einer Mutti”
Set in a Madrid pension, after the Spanish Civil War, "Señor Pinedo" has an ensemble cast. But, like many of the other tales in this colleciton, the story is told in the first person, from the perspective of a young woman who shares a wall with the Pinedo family. Imagining
