Penelope Lively’s Family Album

Sigh! Here I am again, playing catch-up. Penelope Lively’s Family Album. Incisive sketch of a family from numerous perspectives. A technique that’s been often used, of course, but Lively is a master and it’s marvellous…

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Starting the New Year off with Atwood and mystery and memoir . . .

First novel of 2010? Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, about which I think Puttermeister has pretty much articulated what I would say about the book(and she adds some interesting commentary about her longstanding…

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What I Read in 2009

Near the end of last term, I posed the same question to each of my three sections of 1st-year University Composition. We’d been discussing Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You throughout the term,…

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Finishing the Year: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Patricia Cornwell’s The Scarpetta Factor

Oh dear! Once again, I am woefully behind in recording my reading. At the moment, I’m reading Penelope Lively’s The Family Album, having finished Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood as my first 2010…

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Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault

If I hadn’t read Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault immediately after reading Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero, would I have been so struck by what seem such strong stylistic similarities between the two writers? Perhaps not. Certainly,…

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Copyright

Unless otherwise stated, all words and photographs in this blog are my own. If you wish to use any of them, please give me credit for my work. And it should go without saying, but apparently needs to be said: Do not publish entire posts as your own. I will take the necessary action to stop such theft. Thanks.