Stories
Book Review: The Wounded Generation by David Nasaw
My first novel was called Aftermath. I started writing it when I was 17 and finished it when I was 22. Luckily it wasn’t published, but I mention it because it’s set in a veterans’ hospital after World War II. Its main characters are men who’ve been so badly injured they aren’t going to make it […]
Crowdsourced tips for a house purge (plus a few weird extras)
1. I heard a story about friends of friends who decided to downsize into a condo. They’d raised their family in the same house without ever moving, so the place was packed with all manner of everything, including boxes they hadn’t opened in years. It took them five or six months to sort through it, […]
Hamnet reviewed: a book, a movie and the plague, ancient and modern
Exactly six years ago, in late March of 2020, I was finally starting to feel better after what they said was a bad case of the flu. I’d gone to the doctor for the first time three weeks earlier feeling sicker than I had in years. My own doctor wasn’t in the clinic when I […]
Please allow your characters moments of happiness. (A how-to post)
Late last fall, the forecast called for one last day of sun and warmish temperatures. It was time to take down the garden for winter. After plotting out my work, I started with the small garden in the front yard. First I cut down the yellowed lilies, daisies and hostas, the coral bells and violets, […]
Book Review: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories and the art of translation
I was asked one time to read one of my short stories at a literary evening. Nothing unusual, except that the organizers wanted me to read a Spanish translation of the story, which was about a magazine photographer working in Central America. The event was held in Santiago, Chile. I was living in Latin America […]
Book Review: The Feeling of Iron by Giaime Alonge
The rave review must have delighted the author, but I wonder how readers felt after finishing the book. The New York Times calls Italian writer Giaime Alonge’s new novel, The Feeling of Iron, “stunning” and his prose “as cinematic as the finest classic thrillers.” [1] For me, the praise wasn’t the draw. Instead, I picked up Alonge’s novel after reading […]
Does anyone else see their life in cat epochs?
This is the second part of a story about the cats we’ve had in our lives. Last time, I left our family living in Rio de Janeiro, where my husband Paul was posted while working as the South America correspondent for Toronto’s Globe and Mail. Our grey cat Pica had begun his life on a […]
An autobiography in cats, from the dim to the dignified
Our old cat Archie died just before the holidays, aged almost 19. That’s him in the picture. His death got me thinking about the other cats in my life, and the different times they witnessed. It’s helped shut out the news, at least for a while. Maybe we all need a break. Bambi Yes, my […]
Edit Your Novel as if it’s a Screenplay
Everyone knows about editors in movies. An editor takes footage from a movie shoot and works with the director to cut multiple takes into a coherent picture. There’s an Academy Award for Best Film Editing, so names get known. Thelma Schoonmaker has won three Oscars, having edited all of Martin Scorsese’s movies since 1980. But […]
Book Review: Priestdaddy. How cringe do you have to go to succeed?
I don’t see any reason to read only books that are vibrating with the latest buzz. In fact, I’m happy to let them rumble around out there and pick them up later if I feel the need—something that worked brilliantly recently when I came across an off-kilter, eight-year-old memoir that got me thinking. American writer […]
Book Review: Indian Country by Shoba Rao
I sometimes put down Shoba Rao’s new book as I read it, having fun comparing her novel, Indian Country, to a classic work that’s a little bit similar and a whole lot different. Okay, to an Adam Dalgleish mystery by P.D. James. I meant no disrespect to Rao by flipping between the two. In fact, […]
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