Month: October 2014

It must be the result of Alice Munro’s winning the Nobel prize for her life’s work in writing short stories. Both the legendary British writer, Jane Gardam, and now our own Margaret Atwood, have new collections of short stories out this year.

In Stone Mattress, a collection of nine short stories, Atwood is as original as ever. In spite of decades of prize-winning novels, short fiction, poetry, non-fiction and books for children, in this new book she comes up with highly inventive, often shocking, short stories in her own original style.

The Washington Post calls her “an utterly thrilling storyteller.”  There is quirky humour, but also a certain grimness which colours many in this collection. Atwood lives with the writer Graeme Gibson in Toronto. But her imagination takes her far and wide in stories that leave you gasping. But not forgetting.

Review by Anne McDougall

A.J. Fikry runs a bookstore on Alice Island (a fictional island near Rhode Island, U.S.). In this novel, he has just lost his young wife in a car accident, his sales are down, and someone has stolen a rare collection of poems. Even his favorite books can no longer cheer him and alcohol is slowly taking over. Into this depression arrives a baby girl, twenty-five months old, left with a note by her mother, who can no longer take care of her.

Gabrielle Zevin is a Los Angeles writer who has written seven novels, some for young adults, which have been translated into twenty languages. She has a sensitive approach to the isolation we can get into when literary concerns become our only life.

In this book she succeeds in bringing love back to A.J. and to his whole circle. This includes his sister-in-law, the sales rep who becomes his next wife, even the friendly police officer who’s always kept an eye on him. It’s a good story and well-written.

Review by Anne McDougall

Kim Thuy told us the story of her own life in her first novel Ru. We learned of the Vietnam boat people up close and the horrors they left behind as well as the kindness they received in Canada. She has now lived here longer and worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer and restaurant owner in Montreal. The last profession results in vivid descriptions of Vietnam dishes which Man, a chef in Montreal, serves her clientele.

Her second novel follows the story of Man, whose name means “perfect fulfillment”, but she lives a dull, respectable life with her husband and children. This changes when on a trip to Paris she encounters yet another chef and this time falls madly in love.

The book is full of memories of the old world left behind, as well as discoveries of new life.  Kim Thuy ties food and love together in a graceful way. She creates dishes that are much more than sustenance for the body, that evoke memory and emotion, time and place. She is devoting all her time to writing these days. This is an excellent translation by the award-winning translator Sheila Fischman.

Review by Anne McDougall