“Oh here comes the torture” and “oh what crap” are phrases that acclaimed author Heather O’Neill uses to describe the harrowing experience of reciting passages from her novels in public. She is McGill’s Writer-In-Residence, known for her debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals, which won Canada Reads (2007) and When[Read More…]
Tag: literature
’Until August’ —published against the late author’s wishes—revisits desire
“Memory was my source material and my tool. Without it, there’s nothing.” Gabriel García Márquez began to write Until August toward the end of his life. It was intended to be part of a much longer work, cut short by García Márquez’s battle with dementia. His final verdict was absolute:[Read More…]
The Help, Yellowface, and the case against literary gatekeeping
In the past decade alone, numerous fan-favourite books have gone from receiving public adoration to being utterly despised. Many critics of the best-selling novel The Help, in which a white woman depicts the lives of Black maids, have accused author Kathryn Stockett of perpetuating stereotypes and exploiting anti-Black racism, prompting[Read More…]
Revisiting Lucy Maud Montgomery
I didn’t grow up by the sea. It’s strange that it elicits nostalgia from me—I hadn’t even visited the East Coast until last summer. But it also makes a lot of sense: I spent a good portion of my childhood within books, and many days with Anne Shirley. It started[Read More…]
Childhood through the ages
Aesop’s Fables (1571) is the oldest book in McGill’s Rare Children’s Book Collection. Written in Latin, with interpretive notes in Greek, it’s now housed in a collection of children’s literature—despite predating the Victorian conception of childhood itself. But this story also begins later, in the 1930s, with Sheila R. Bourke.[Read More…]
Goodreads Choice Awards prioritizes sameness over diversity
Most people have heard of the Grammys and the Oscars, but unless you’re an avid reader, the Goodreads Choice Awards may be less well-known. Goodreads is a social media platform dedicated to books and those who read them. Since 2009, the website has hosted its annual Choice Awards, allowing users[Read More…]
Electric, ethereal, and earnest: An evening at Tommy Lefroy’s ‘Le Trashfire’ tour
On Sept. 28, Tommy Lefroy fans at Montreal’s Le Ministère sent seismic sound waves across North America as the crowd chanted along to the duo’s ethereal and addictive harmonies. With Wynter Bethel and Tessa Mouzourakis—who record as Tommy Lefroy—on electric guitar, and Blake Evans on drums, the hour-long set incorporated[Read More…]
Finding Mr. Right in Indigo’s Bestsellers section
All of us have picked up a book advertised by Indigo as “a thrilling new romance between two forces of nature” only to find out it’s a drawn-out bore about two coworkers who are just afraid to ask each other out. Or maybe it’s about a woman falling in love[Read More…]
The Sally Rooney effect
In reaction to the pandemic, people have indulged in melancholy. Though Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People was neither her debut nor her most recent, it was the one that made her famous. The gloomy but beautiful novel was published in 2018, and adapted for television by the BBC two years[Read More…]
Literary theorist Jeff Dolven pays a virtual visit to the English department
On Jan. 19, the McGill English Department held its 2022 Spector Lecture, an annual event that highlights contemporary work in the literary field. This year, the department welcomed Jeff Dolven, a poet, literary critic, and Princeton professor of English. Later, students and faculty had a chance to hear several of[Read More…]
