A quick glance at my bookshelves and you would think that Jane Urquhart is one of my favourite authors. I have all of her novels save one -- a couple of hardcovers purchased new -- but I have a habit of leaving them unfinished. Nonetheless, the themes she pursues in
Roma Tearne’s The Swimmer HarperPress-HarperCollins, 2010 (Looking for a swallow rather than a full glass? ORANGE Squirt below.) Sometimes the placement of a book in your reading schedule can impact that book negatively; it might unfairly cast a light on shortcomings, either the reader’s or the storyteller’s. (I should have
Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) Penguin, 1978 She's "goodness made interesting". That's what Irving Howe calls Tess, the main character in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Interesting is one way to put it. Not all of his Victorian readers found it so however. His religious skepticism and his
Suzette Mayr's Venous Hum Arsenal Pulp, 2004 Yes, that's right: it's a mouth. Somehow too many canines, pink fleshy tongue: it's the cover of Venous Hum. Eye-catching from the start, but it makes more sense after you've finished reading. "It's an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence announcing the end
Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel McClelland & Stewart, 1964 Virago Modern Classic No. 251 The Afterword in my McClelland & Stewart edition is written by Adele Wiseman, long-time friend of Margaret Laurence, and it contains several long excerpts from the letters exchanged between the writing friends (Adele Wiseman's The Sacrifice and Crackpot
