Clara Callan
Critique • Quotes
First editionFirst 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
