No matter how dilgent one has been with one's read-o-lutions, February is not the shortest month but the longest test. If it had a chapter heading? In which all your good bookish intentions will flake away like paper splinters from the spine of a well-loved paperback. And, yet, my February reading, one
With chapters named for the days of the week in Street Angel and with specific dates in a given week in Adult Onset, these two novels seem to make ideal reading companions. Ultimately, much of literary fiction is preoccupied with time. Whether it is Molly Bloom's day in James Joyce's
Isn't there something satisfying about beginning to read someone's published diaries in a January, when those diaries begin in some other long-ago January? Dawn Powell's diaries have been on my shelves for more than a decade but suddenly, in this January, I felt compelled to begin reading them. It sat beside other
Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods (2014) Comprised of five long and two short works, these tales are peopled with losses and lonelinesses. Hues of red, black and white dominate the volume, with other colours used sparingly for contrast. Panel use is unpredictable, with images sometimes boxed but often sprawling and
It seems perfect. Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be? is not really a novel. And this is not really a review. It's a collection of my collisions with understanding. Opening sentence: "How should a person be?" Subtitle: A Novel from Life Off the page, there is an interview with Shelagh
