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Clara Callan

Critique • Quotes

Clara Callan first editionFirst edition
Publication details ▽ Publication details △

First publication
2001

Literature form
Novel

Genres
Literary, epistolary

Writing language
English

Author's country
Canada

Length
Approx. 168,000 words

Notable lines

Nora left for New York today. I think she is taking a terrible chance going all the way down there but, of course, she wouldn't listen. You can't tell Nora anything. You never could.

— First lines

If I can’t write poetry, at least perhaps I can try to think and feel like a poet.

 

I want so badly to help you realize, Elizabeth Anne, how difficult and puzzling and full of wonder it all is: some day I will tell you how I learned to watch the shifting light of autumn days or smelled the earth through snow in March; how one winter morning God vanished from my life and how one summer evening I sat in a Ferris wheel, looking down on a man that hurt me badly; I will tell you how I once travelled to Rome and saw all the soldiers in that city of dead poets; I will tell you how I met your father outside a movie house in Toronto, and how you came to be.

 

[Before afterword:]

On a winter afternoon when we turn the lights on early, or perhaps a summer day of leaves and sky, I will begin by conjugating the elemental verb. I am. You are. It is.

— Last lines

 

Critique • Quotes

See also:

Such Is My Beloved

The Stone Angel

The Diviners

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