Industrial Roots

Industrial Roots is a collection of short stories from award winning Canadian poet, author and translator Lisa Pike. I received an advance copy of the collection from the publisher, Héloïse Press, in exchange for a fair review.

Pike captures the world of working class Canadian women in Ontario through their voices, employing slang, vernacular and standard English to bring the women to life. In some ways, the narrative voices put me in mind of Flannery O’Connor’s writings, in others the Anne novels of L M Montgomery. There’s a robustness to the exchanges between characters and the way the women telling the stories relate them that lifts them from the page and allows the reader to be in the scene with them.

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Bass Rock to The Lowland

Hello June, here so soon. I’m a day late for this month’s Six Degrees of Separation because summer arrived in Manchester this week and yesterday was too glorious to pass up the chance to read in the garden. Kate, who hosts the meme at Books Are My Favourite and Best, has chosen the Stella Prize winning book The Bass Rock for the first book in the chain.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Normal People to Mrs Dalloway

It’s the first Saturday in June and time for this month’s Six Degrees of Separation. This month, Kate has chosen Sally Rooney’s Normal People to start us on our way through our literary connections.

Twenty Books of Summer readathon

I have 149 books that I own on my to read list. 78 of those are physical books that teeter in a pair of piles in front of one of my bookcases. When I read that Sandra (A Corner of Cornwall) and Paula (Book Jotter) are doing the 20 Books of Summer readathon hosted at Cathy’s blog 746 Books (I thought my to read pile was bad!), I decided this was the thing that I needed to focus my mind and get 20 of those books read.

The Break

Read 01/03/2019-07/03/2019

Rating 5 stars

The Break is set in the North End area of Winnipeg, Manitoba, an area with a large First Nations and Métis population. It tells the story of a family of Métis women and the abuse they experience and witness at the hands of First Nations, Métis and white men. It’s an incredible debut novel and worthy of the list of accolades at the front of the book.

Six Degrees of Separation: from The French Lieutenant’s Woman to The Essex Serpent

 

Happy New Year everyone. I’m starting my 2019 blogs with the January Six Degrees meme, sticking with my tradition of being slightly late. (Resolutions to do better are pointless, don’t you think?) This month we’re starting with The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles.

Six Degrees of Separation: from A Christmas Carol to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

 

It’s the 2nd December and Christmas will be going up Chez Hicks today. The family tradition when I was growing up was to put Christmas up on the 1st December, which has been tweaked to the first Saturday of December in our house. Either way, I’m only a day late.

Washington Black

Read 21/10/2018-10/11/2018

Rating: 3.5 stars

I was itching to read Washington Black as soon as it made the long list for the 2018 Booker Prize. Its strapline “Escape is only the beginning” carried an air of intrigue and adventure with it, and the premise of a young black slave plucked from the horrors of plantation life to assist an inventor in his flights of fancy promised something a little different in approach to the usual telling of the story of slavery. The book mostly hits its mark and is worthy of its place on the Booker short list, the thing that prompted me to pick the book off the New Stock Just In shelves at the library.

The Old Beauty and Others

Read 23/04/2018

Rating: 4 stars

Over in A Corner of Cornwall, Sandra’s recent Six Degrees post brought Willa Cather’s The Old Beauty and Others to my attention. First published in Britain nine years after Cather’s death, the volume brings together the last three short stories she wrote, each one a masterclass in how to write this literary form, each one containing an entire world within its pages.

Six Degrees of Separation – from The Beauty Myth to Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

 

Heck! It’s almost time for April’s Six Degrees and I haven’t done March’s yet. (It doesn’t matter, Jan. Get your completer-finisher anxiety under control.)