I don’t know why, but I have read a lot of books set during WWII and in England. True I like historical fiction, and true there are a lot of these books written (maybe someone in publishing can explain it to me? Likely because they sell. Because I’ll read them). I bet one of you knows why this particular period and place is so enthralling to this reader. Continue reading
Category Archives: Historical Fiction
Everyone Brave is Forgiven: I have read a lot of books about the Blitz.
Filed under British literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction
Lost in September: I predict a Giller nominee.
One of the skills I developed during my undergraduate degree was finding connections among the books I was reading for different courses. I’d hear about an idea in one course and take that idea and put it to work in another; or I’d notice themes from one novel resonating in another course that might be distant in time or geography. I’m not sure whether this cross-reading was intention on the part of the program (I’m pretty sure not) but the consequence was that I took personal pleasure in finding these moments of connection or overlap. I’d probably have made for an excellent thematic critic. Alas. I raise all of this because even now with the combination of my terrible memory and my appetite for reading I often find myself midway into a book and certain I’ve recently read something similar, or surprised that everyone seems to be writing about X topic (which probably owes more to how I select what I read than the novels themselves…). Continue reading
Filed under Canadian Literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Prize Winner
News of the World: Why Reading the News is Brave
I went on a book requesting spree at the end of the year when the ‘best of’ lists came out and then promptly forgot what I had requested. As a consequence I get near weekly notifications from the library that such-and-such book is waiting for me. And each time I swear I’ve never heard of the book. But off I go and pick it up and begin to read – confident in late 2016 Erin who must have had some inkling that this unknown novel was of some worth. Continue reading
Kindred: The Time Travelling Slave Narrative You Hoped Wouldn’t Be So… 2016.
You read a book like Octavia Butler’s Kindred and you get to thinking some bleak thoughts. Published in the 1970s, the ‘fantasy’ novel follows Dana through a time travelling slave narrative. Opening in the 1970s the reader is immediately hooked as Dana travels back in time to the pre-civil war South and finds herself – a black woman – among slavery. The mechanics of time travel in the novel are explained by virtue of the ‘kindred’ connection between Dana and her 1800something ancestor, Rufus: Dana is called back to the past each time Rufus is in danger of dying so that she can save his life; Dana is called back to the present each time her own life is in danger. Continue reading
Filed under American literature, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Uncategorized
Literary Vice 