Short Story Monday

The Faber Book of Contemporary Canadian Short Stories, edited by Michael Ondaatje, published in 1990.

I had forgotten that I had this book. It was one I inherited from a son when he left home. If I remember rightly, the book was a prize for placing in one of those runs that people do, like the Vancouver Sun Run, only this particular race was in another city. So the book has been on my shelf for a number of years, never read.

It comprises 714 pages with forty-four authors contributing a total of forty-nine stories and begins and ends with a story by Alistair Macleod. I have chosen to read it cover to cover, and hopefully I will not be tempted to skip here and there as I sometimes do when I read anthologies.

I have read seven of the stories to date, all in a row as planned.

One of the stories is titled The Medicine Line and was written by Wallace Stegner. It is an excerpt from Wolf Willow (1962), a memoir which tells of his early childhood in Saskatchewan. This remarkable story is about the surveying of the southern boundary between Canada and the United States, specifically one stretch along the 49th parallel. The surveyors commenced their work in 1872 at Lake of the Woods, and in August of 1874 "the survey parties of both sides...[had] located the last monument of the 1861 survey that had carried the boundary from the Pacific to the Rockies". They had crossed the wide prairies and reached Waterton Lakes (southwest corner of Alberta). An enduring achievement - "a job of immense importance".

Short Story Monday is hosted by John Mutford.

Sunrise on a Frosty Morning

Wednesday Book Club

On the second floor of the library, at the top of the stairs, is a shelf specifically set aside for "New Fiction". It is always my first stop. I don't know whether it was the author's name, which I recognized, or the picture on the front of the jacket that prompted me to pick up and look inside E. L. Doctorow's newest novel, Homer & Langley (2009), but I was immediately intrigued.

The novel is a fictionalized account of the lives of New York's reclusive Collyer brothers, who became known for their unconventional ways and hoarding activities. For me, the line between fact and fiction in this story seems somewhat blurred, possibly because the author uses the brothers' real names. Aside from this, I enjoyed the novel simply for the story itself. I liked both brothers, and I also liked Doctorow's writing.

The next book of E. L. Doctorow's that I would like to read is Ragtime. But, for the moment, I am turning to something lighter - a novel by P. G. Wodehouse.

Short Story Monday

A Retrieved Reformation by O. Henry

O. Henry's short stories never fail to amaze me. They are rich in human interest, and the endings are not what one might expect. In this particular story, we are introduced to a man who is a professional safe cracker. After he has served his time and is let out of prison, what does he go and do but...

If you are curious to know the outcome, this story can be enjoyed at Bibliomania.


Short Story Monday is hosted by John Mutford.

Sinkut Mountain