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My Friend, Miss Dorothy Jane

My Friend, Miss Dorothy Jane      When I was very young, there were no children’s programs like Mr. Rogers’ Neighbourhood, Captain Kangaroo or the Muppets .  Yes, television had been invented, but it didn’t exist for me. We lived on a Northeastern Ontario backwoods farm in a house where light was furnished by coal-oil lamps and later, a gas lantern. The power came later, when I was of school age.   We had books, and radio, though. My mother read to me and my sister every night and eventually I learned to decipher those little black marks on the page for myself. One of my favourite stories was “Thumbelina,” about a child so tiny her mother used a walnut shell as her cradle.  Stolen by a toad, who wants her as her son’s bride, Thumbelina escapes, and is befriended by a fish, a butterfly, a mouse and a swallow.  In the end, the swallow saves her from marriage to a  mole by flying her off to a faraway land where she meets a prince just her size, and lives happily ever after. Another b
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"Showing and Sharing 'A Striking Woman.' "

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This past Thursday was "Show and Share" morning at the Coffee, Companionship and Conversation group at St. Mark's Anglican Church, Fisher Avenue, Ottawa.  Often we have guest speakers on various topics. Realizing that members of the group have hobbies, interests and pet projects, the organizers decided to give participants the opportunity to show and share them.  We had the story of a rescue cat who became its owner's best friend; displays of soapstone carvings, hand-painted china, and unique hand-crafted greeting cards; a presentation on the therapeutic value of colouring, a flautist's performance accompanied on piano, and an author talking about her latest historical  novel - moi. Because the novel was inspired by ( very very loosely based on) the early life and career of trade union organizer Madeleine Parent (1918-2012) I talked for five minutes about her life and work,  about meeting with her, and about why I decided not to attempt a biography but to write a
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Thoughts on the novel, "Chevengur," by Andrey Platonov

Chevengur  reviewed by Ruth Latta   Ever since Elizabeth and Robert Chandler published their new translation of Chevengur last year, the 1927 novel by Russian writer, Andrey Platonov, has become popular. It was reviewed by Benjamin Kunkel in the New Yorker (March 11, 2024) and an internet search provides plentiful information about both author and book.  Andrey Platonov (1898-1951), a railway mechanic’s son, became an irrigation engineer, land reclamation specialist and developer of new hydraulic and steam turbines. (See Vladimir Sharov’s article on “Platonov’s People,” in the Chandler translation.) Some of Platonov’s writing was published in the Soviet Union during his lifetime, including several excerpts from Chevengur , but the Soviet literature authorities rejected the novel as a whole, which was not published until 1972, in France. An English translation was published in 1976, and finally, during the Gorbachev administration, the book was published in the Soviet Union in 19
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My review of the novel "Tom Lake"

  http://www.compulsivereader. com Volume 26, Issue 4, 1 April 2024 Click on the above for my review of "Tom Lake" in Compulsive Reader.
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"This Visible Worm", the "William/Willie challenge":

THIS VISIBLE WORM   My “William/Willie challenge”  Some years ago I watched the movie, “Dangerous Minds,” centring on a dedicated high school teacher played by Michelle Pfeiffer. She initiated a “Dylan/Dylan challenge for her students. They were to find poems/lyrics by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and the American singer/songwriter Bob Dylan which had the same theme.  It turned out that each poet had written a work urging a bold, confrontational attitude to death. Bob Dylan wrote:  “...I will not carry myself down to die./When I go to my grave, my head will be high.”  Dylan Thomas wrote, “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”   The idea of finding a connection between two poets from different eras and intrigued me, so I invented a similar challenge for myself, the “William/Willie” challenge. “William” is the English poet William Blake (1757-1827), whose books, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience struck a chord with me. As a studen
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Published, and In Stock

 The online magazine, Compulsive Reader, has published my review of Tom Lake :   https://compulsivereader.com/ 2024/03/12/a-review-of-tom- lake-by-ann-patchett/  Ottawa's Indigo store at Pinecrest has copies of my novel, A Striking Woman , in stock.
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A Disease

  A DISEASE (dedicated to the memory of  Dr. Deborah Gorham) “ At the time, people kept telling me, ‘If you put your little boy in day care,  he’ll catch a disease! ’” said the guest speaker to the women at the community center. In an adjoining room, for the duration of the half-hour talk,  a sitter supervised their children at play. “ But he was fine, stayed healthy and learned social skills that have served him well.” I was newly married, new to the city where my husband worked. Listening, I harboured a germ of hope. to become like this historian  with the glossy dark hair, confident air, and passion for her work. I was stunned by the social expectations that marriage had brought down on me. Everyone but my husband wanted me to find a job,  buy a house with a backyard and have babies - A.S.A.P.!  STAT! Any other path was pathological. Were wedded bliss and a vocation incompatible? Were my dreams a disease? Forty years later, the historian spoke to my book club about her latest biogra
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