It is one of the oldest institutions in the world. Most humans are actively engaged in it as I write this. Some people spend their whole lives searching for it, but does anyone actually know what marriage is? In Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, Elizabeth Gilbert attempts to find the answers. She looks ...
My first encounter with Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto’s 1988 novel (translated into English in 1993 by Megan Backus) was in the late 90s when I discovered a copy wedged into the corner of a library shelf. It’s a small novel; only 150 pages. Yoshimoto’s language is simple, with short sentences describing action in unromantic language. Despite ...
This Wednesday is Burns Night, a celebration of Robert Burns’ work which will be observed in detail (from Toast to the Lassies to Address to a Haggis) by people all over the world, including many of the 4.7 million Scots in Canada. Burns’ work travels. Auld Lang Syne is sung globally every New Year. He ...
Several weeks ago I picked up my old copy of Collected Stories, a volume of Carol Shields’ short stories which includes her final work, Segue. I recall buying the book a bit tearfully after the author’s death in 2003, pre-ordered from a Glasgow bookshop. Shields’ work gains depth on each reading. Her characters’ turns of ...
Neil Strauss’s The Game fell into my hands by accident, the way most strange and slightly sticky things do. You might have heard of this book. It was a New York Times bestseller for a worrying two months in 2005. Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia was apparently based on the material printed on the 486 ...
Poet and crime writer Sophie Hannah’s 2006 collection, Selected Poems, is a compilation of new work and poetry from four previous volumes. Hannah gets to the guts of a wide range of subjects with skill. Her delivery is unsentimental and unpretty, and each poem’s shape and formula is complete, and unquestionably correct. There’s a downside ...
I always request books for Christmas. I always have. I’m not sure if that made me an easy child to buy for. Novels are certainly cheaper than a new Nintendo (which is what we called an Xbox back in my day), but how to select one for a grumpy nine-year-old? Or, for that matter, a ...
Mordecai Richler has a talent for shovelling trouble. His 1973 collection of essays of the same name contains a heavy shovel full of the author’s renowned criticism of his own country and close-to-the-bone commentary on the Jewish-Canadian experience, along with commentary on culture and the life of a writer. The style is less academic and ...
Edited by Jill Dawson in 1992, The Virago Book of Wicked Verse is a collection of international, century-spanning work by women who have subverted the status quo. Sex and misery are the main topics, though they’re never represented the same way twice. Bawdy songs about impoverished prostitutes and compassionless poems about cruelty sit alongside childhood ...
Esther Freud’s novel The Sea House describes the internal frustrations of Lily, a young Londoner re-evaluating her life while doing postgraduate research in a rented house by the ocean. As an examination of love and lovers, the novel, which encompasses the parallel story of the architect Lily is researching, failed to stir me. Lily is ...
Want a cheap, fun date? Stay home with a cheesy romance movie, popcorn, and a bottle of wine. You...
On dates I still love a little bit of chivalry — but it goes too far when the restaurant...
There has been an upswing in royal fever on both sides of the Atlantic since last April. When Kate...
Dear Madame X, I know you say that it’s not good to fake your orgasms, but what if you...
It is one of the oldest institutions in the world. Most humans are actively engaged in it as I...
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort...
Usually getting fired is a bad thing. But, somehow, this woman is happy about it. Can you imagine...
My attention was drawn this week to an article on the resurgence of the market for men’s underwear. It...
