I like reading short stories even though the form confounds me a bit. I've heard it said that short stories are harder to write than novels, so I often wonder why an author like Alice Munro chooses the format, and as a reader, as much as I love her collections, I feel a bit deflated as each story...
When Margaret Laurence set out for Somaliland with her engineer husband in 1950, she confronted the difficulty of communication between peoples of vastly different cultures. Yet she came to know the skilled orators, poets and craftsmen of the country, and to share the vision of a people’s struggl...
Having lived ten years in Ghana I was curious to read this novel set just prior to Independence in 1957. It did not disappoint - though I am not Ghanaian and also experienced the country as a keen outsider. Laurence's interlinked protagonists - the Ghanaian Nathaniel and the unlikeable racist Joh...
Tonnerre, for his grandfather who fought with Riel in 1885) The Métis they met from the whole prairie To keep their lands, to keep them free, They gathered there in the valley Qu’Appelle Alongside their leader, Louis Riel. They took their rifles into their hands, They fought to keep their fat...
As always when the rain hovers, the air was like syrup, thick and heavily still, over-sweet with flowering vines and the occasional ripe paw-paw that had fallen and now lay yellow and fermented, a winery for ants. I was annoyed at having to stay in my office so late. Annoyed, too, that I found th...
They came back a week ago and now I haven’t seen him for a week. I saw him almost every night while they were away. No – that’s not quite true. Out of fourteen evenings, I was with him for eight. But anyway, that was more than half. And now I haven’t seen him for a week. What did I say? What did ...
Stacey looks at the harbor, half an eye on her watch. She has not come down here to observe the gulls and ships, but she cannot yet bring herself to walk along Grenoble Street and enter the one door she must enter. — I’ve got to. Can’t stay away from home much longer. It isn’t fair to Katie, to...
I’ve slept all night stretched out on this board floor, my head against a box, and now my muscles and joints are so wooden that I can barely move them at all. My stomach convulses, and thirst scorches my mouth. I’m covered, I perceive, with a tweed coat, and not a very handsome one at that, a sho...
Not writing. Looking at the river. Getting started each morning was monstrous, an almost impossible exercise of will, in which finally the will was never enough, and it had to be begun on faith. Last night, sleepless until three A.M., long and stupendously vivid scenes unfolded. Too tired to get ...