Ruth Anne Latta

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 ...

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...

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