B. Morrison's Blog, page 36

Awards 40, Nimrod International Journal

A literary magazine from the University of Tulsa, Nimrod sponsors several writing contests. This issue (Volume 62, Number 1, Fall/Winter 2018) features the winners of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and the Katharine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. Unusually for such magazines, this issue also includes the work of those who won second prize, finalists, semi-finalists and those who received honorable mention. Also unusual is that most of the poets have several poems, not just a single winnin...

Playlist 2018

Songs are stories too. And sometimes poetry. And often a comfort to me. Many thanks to my friends for their music.

Fargo, North Dakota, Carter Burwell
Love Theme From Barton Fink, Carter Burwell
My Heart Has Wings, Aengus Finnan
North Wind, Aengus Finnan
Moon On The Water, Aengus Finnan
In the Bleak Midwinter, Bare Necessities
St. Margaret’s Hill, Bare Necessities
Old Wife Behind The Fire, Bare Necessities
Hard Times, Gillian Welch
The Way It Will Be, Gillian Welch
Six White Horses, Gillian W...

Lisette’s List, by Susan Vreeland

In 1937, young Lisette Roux and her husband André leave their beloved Paris and move to the south of France, to the small Provençal village of Roussillon to care for André’s grandfather Pascal.

Once an ochre miner, Pascal loved paintings whose pigments used his ochre. By exchanging his homemade frames for paintings by destitute artists, Pascal had acquired eight works of art. These paintings have grown in value as the fame of the artists grew, but their worth is beyond money to Pascal. He w...

Mississippi Review

One of the controversies circulating in the writing world has to do with cultural appropriation. What this buzz word boils down to is writing a story in which the protagonist is from a culture other than your own, one that is underrepresented in the publishing world. It could be a man writing from a female protagonist’s point of view, or a white writer with an Asian, Black, Native American, etc. protagonist.

One side argues that as writers we use our imagination and routinely imagine oursel...

Priest Turns Therapist Treats Fear of God, by Tony Hoagland

I have long been a fan of Tony Hoagland’s poetry and have written before about his books here and here. He brings together humor and tenderness, wit and emotion, gentle satire and surprising insight. Using the things of this world, he invites us to be present in our lives and appreciate each moment.

I used the present tense. It’s hard even now to admit that he is gone, even after following some of his journey through his poems and essays in The Sun Magazine, such as “The Cure for Racism is...

“The Tower”, by Andrew O’Hagan

I subscribed to the London Review of Books for the book reviews. I liked that they were longer than the couple of paragraphs usually allotted to a book review, and that they often placed the book in the context of the author’s oeuvre. Sometimes the long-form reviews told too much of the story, but that wasn’t a deterrence if I was truly interested in the book. I also became adept at skipping over those parts.

Over the couple of decades I’ve been reading the LRB, I’ve been a little dismayed a...

Hawke’s Discovery, by Mark Willen

Last week I described Erica Bauermeister’s The School of Essential Ingredients, as a restorative read, much needed after a series of books with unpleasant and untrustworthy protagonists. This week I’ve struck gold again.

Jonas Hawke, a retired lawyer in Beacon Junction, Vermont, finds himself in a moral and ethical dilemma when his son Nathan, editor of the local paper, begins investigating one of Jonas’s old cases. Nathan is intrigued by the possibility of a coverup involving the leading co...

The School of Essential Ingredients, by Erica Bauermeister

I’ve had a string of books filled with unpleasant and untrustworthy characters. Likeability is not a requirement for me as a reader. Stories of people from whom I’d run screaming in real life can yield psychological insights, an engaging puzzle, or the sheer pleasure of nuanced characterisation. However, sometimes I need a break.

This gentle book, by an author recommended by my friend Christine, fit the bill.

Lillian taught herself to cook at a young age when her mother, shocked by her husba...

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was my book club’s selection this month. What’s it about? Well, imagine Eat, Pray, Love with an insecure gay man, an author who visits double the number of countries trying to outrun his anxieties.

Arthur Less—no subtlety there, so I should have been warned—is our protagonist. About to turn 50, his latest book has been rejected by his publisher, and the much-younger man who has been his occasional bedfellow is about to get married.

Less is a sad, colorless p...

Sunburn, by Laura Lippman

Pauline leaves her family at the beach and returns to their rented apartment to pack her bag. Inspired by Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years, she has decided to simply walk away from her life.

Though Tyler’s book isn’t named, I knew immediately which one was meant. Who could forget Delia on Bethany Beach, walking away from her family, carrying only a straw tote decorated with a large flower? For all of us overburdened mothers with our unrealised dreams—often undefined even to ourselves—it was as t...