The Stone Diaries
When I was young, I think I can remember my mother having a copy of this book. My lovely spouse also remembers one being somewhere in her childhood home. This is a review of Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries.
Literature
Literary novels.
Literature is a genre.
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The Butterfly Plague
Christmas shopping for our household would not be complete without at least one trip to the bookstore. Multiple bookstores. Fanfare Books is where I first discovered the work of Timothy Findley, who spent his final years in this town and was a dedicated friend of the store. This is a review of The Butterfly Plague.
The Love of a Good Woman
It takes a very good writer to write the ordinary and make it seem exactly that: ordinary. Alice Munro is just such a writer. Her stories aren’t fantastical; instead, they are stories of people that could be your neighbour or one of your parents’ friends. This is a review of The Love of A Good Woman.
Barometer Rising
It’s a book about many things: Canada’s struggle for identity as a sovereign nation with a complex relationship to Britain and British politics, the psychological and physical impacts of war, the differing attitudes of different strata of society towards the war overseas. I always find Can Lit particularly provides an atmosphere where this kind of multi-layered complexity flourishes. This is a review of Hugh MacLennan’s Barometer Rising.
Pride and Prejudice
I’ve been reading classic literature since I was very young, but the work of Austen was a blind spot for me. Mostly, that had to do with the way acquaintances pushed me to read them. Bright. Sparkly. Light. Romantic. Those are not the words that draw me to literature. They also weren’t the entire picture of either the novels or the author. This is a review of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Eugene Onegin
Live-streamed opera is where we first saw Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, which is based on the Pushkin novel. Even though we weren’t provided with subtitles to the Met’s production from 2007, the imagery and the music were capable of conveying the story in and of themselves. Whenever I see fall leaves in piles on the ground, I’m reminded of the set design. This is a review of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.
Wuthering Heights
The romance of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw is one of the most well known in English literature. The narrative proceeds in twists and turns that never lack for dramatic flair. This is review of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights — an essential ghost story as much as an essential romance.
A Journal of the Plague Year
The difficulty of the year has me turning to books more than ever as a soothing distraction and in my search for them I can’t help but notice the decided uptick in plague literature. Most of the books I have seen mentioned I’ve read before all of this began — but this one was sitting in my to-read stacks. This is a review of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of a Plague Year.
Uncle Silas
What do you think of when you think of Gothic mystery? A mysterious death followed by a mysterious will? Opium? Scary governesses? Some kind of murder plot? Graves? Estranged uncles? Gypsies? Creepy cousins? Murder? Gambling debts? Estates badly managed?
Did you say all of the above?
This is a review of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas.
Madame Bovary
It’s an example of literary realism that is widely considered one of the most influential novels in literary history. It’s been adapted many times both for stage and for screen as well as being admired both by Henry James and Marcel Proust. Though it was his debut novel, it’s also considered Flaubert’s magnum opus. This is a review of Madame Bovary.