Clara Callan
CRITIQUE | THE TEXT
First editionFirst publication
2001
Literature form
Novel
Genres
Literary, epistolary
Writing language
English
Author's country
Canada
Length
Approx. 168,000 words
Notable lines
First 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.
Passages
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.
Last lines
[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.
CRITIQUE | THE TEXT
See also:
Novel
The Stone Angel
Novel
The Diviners
Author
Margaret Laurence
Novel
The Blind Assassin
Author
Margaret Atwood
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