The most poignant story is that of the encounter between a very pregnant Rita and a man in the deserted stacks at the Université de Montréal library. Renewing a driver’s licence (“The Motorcycle”), buying a home (“The Pink House”), writer’s block (“Soft Pastels”), a hit and run (“In Front of the Bell Centre”), and a chance meeting in the library stacks (“In the Stacks”) all supply events for the keen interpretive eye of Ms. After a few stories, the pieces begin to fall into place, and the reader’s patience is rewarded with some fine exercises in creative writing of otherwise mundane incidents looked at by a discerning eye. Some patience is required on the part of the reader for the stories seem a little random at first, many not using proper names or are written from different perspectives. The two main characters throughout the majority of the stories are Rita, an Italian-Canadian, and an unnamed woman who gets struck by a car outside the Bell Centre in Montreal. Such is the case in Licia Canton’s The Pink House and Other Stories (2018, Longbridge Books), her second collection of short fiction. This work makes for essential reading for all of those interested in the literature of Empire, travel writing and the Middle East.I enjoy reading short story collections, particularly when there are connections between the stories, for instance, reoccurring characters. He analyses the relationship between Empire and author, showing how the one influenced the other, leading to a vast array of texts that might never have been produced had it not been for the ambitions of Imperial Britain. In this elegantly crafted book, James Canton examines over one hundred primary sources, from forgotten gems to the classics of T E Lawrence, Thesiger and Philby. In a similar fashion, as the Empire receded in the wake of World War II, so did the whole tradition of Middle East travel writing.
Missionaries, soldiers and spies as well as tourists and explorers started to visit the area, creating an ever bigger supply of writers, and market for their books. Suddenly, ordinary men and women found themselves visiting the region as British influence increased. With the advent of an Imperial presence in the region, as the British seized power in Egypt, the very nature of travel to the Middle East changed. Until the 1880s, British travellers to Arabia were for the most part wealthy dilettantes who could fund their travels from private means.
0 kommentar(er)
