Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuationby Lynne Truss

Gotham Books, 2003
~ Posted October 2020

Punctuation, says Lynne Truss in her bestselling book Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, is not a class issue nor is it “a way of belittling the uneducated,” as some critics have said. Punctuation, she says, is a system of printers’ marks that has aided the clarity of the written word for the past half-millennium.

Lynne Truss is an author, sportswriter, radio playwright, journalist, and wannabe painter who was taken aback at the fanfare created by her small book on punctuation. According to her website, www.lynnetruss.com, she felt it “was a book that nobody could accuse of failure, because it couldn’t possibly succeed.” In the preface, Truss writes that the book is aimed at people who care about punctuation, that “tiny minority of British people” who believe punctuation has a place in our world. Her readers quickly expanded beyond this small group of punctuation lovers. Apparently, the world was ready and waiting for a book about dashes, colons, misplaced apostrophes, and pesky little commas.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves has spawned an industry: there is an illustrated edition (2008), a children’s version (2006), a workbook (2011), and, of course, an audio book. Truss wrote the book, she says, as a “rallying cry” to those whose prose is hopelessly littered with colons, exclamation marks and dashes, or, conversely, with run-on sentences that require an interpreter. Truss is done with the English-speaking world playing loosey-goosey with punctuation, and, it turns out, she is not alone. In his book, The Road to Little Dribbling (Penguin Random House/Doubleday 2015), Bill Bryson says that “… many people are not merely unacquainted with the fundamentals of punctuation, but evidently don't realize that there are fundamentals.” I assume Bryson and Truss are coffee buddies!

Truss’ book discusses what academics call ‘syntactic ambiguity’, also known as structural ambiguity. This was a new term to me, although scholarly articles abound, articles such as the “lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity”, “semantic syntactic ambiguity”, and my personal favourite, “syntactic ambiguity prosody,” (don’t ask!). According to my non-academic source, Wikipedia, syntactic ambiguity is when “a sentence can be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure.”

There are many books on punctuation. Many! Penguin contracted R.L. Trask to write one (The Penguin Guide to Punctuation, 1997). Amazon.ca has more than 1,000 books on the topic: illustrated books, children’s books, academic books, and specialty books devoted to commas or apostrophes. Apparently, we who speak English so carelessly have not fully grasped the basics of how to write it.

I asked friends if they had read Truss’ book, and if so, what did they think? A common response was “it was funny but didn’t finish it.” Interesting! My theory is that, as it catapulted to stardom, Eats, Shoots and Leaves was marketed as a very funny book about punctuation. Not so. Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a book about punctuation that is very funny. It is a book to teach us, written with wit and humour, but it is deadly serious about the ramifications of overusing, underusing, and misusing punctuation. Punctuation matters, Truss says, “even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.” 

 Her language is clear, her explanations sensible and understandable, and her contribution to continuing the structural quality of written English is stellar, although she is cognizant of the evolving stylistic shifts of written English. For example, she says, books by Hardy or Dickens are littered with what we consider today to be an overabundance of commas, semicolons, and colons. She has words of warning, however. Clarity and punctuation go hand in hand and one misplaced comma can cause a huge misunderstanding. Life or death huge. 

I grew up in an ex-British colony, and I learned Serious British Punctuation, which differs slightly from North American punctuation. Wimpled nuns of the Rigid Punctuation Convention taught me.  Mum was also keen on punctuation, so I didn’t have a chance. I was taught that a full stop (period) comes after quotation marks. North American convention places the period at the end of the sentence but within the marks. This didn’t matter much until I went back to school and profs continue to correct my essays using the North American convention, about which I did not know. Thanks so much, Lynne, for clearing that up for me.

I’m going to give Bill Bryson the last word, and I believe Lynne Truss would be pleased. “So,” he says in the aforementioned blogpost, “here is all I am saying about this. Stop it.”

Granta: Going Back

Granta: Going Back

Edited by John Freeman 

House of Anansi Press

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, February 2011 

Short stories are often the first thing new writers publish.  They go in and out of popularity, and finding a home for that first story can be difficult.  Since it’s makeover in the 1970's, Granta has played a significant role in providing a market for new writers and artists, publishing short stories, photojournalism, poetry, biographies, indeed anything that is able to loosely fit within its pages.  It is indeed “The Magazine of New Writing”.

Going Back is a ‘themed’ issue based somewhat loosely on “what happens after we go back”. It diverges from Granta’s norm in that the writers and artists are well established. Editor John Freeman has put together a splendid collection of stories, poetry, art and photography about loss, memories, joy and finding the ability to let go. 

Janine di Giovanni’s The Book of the Dead brings into sharp focus the human spirit’s ability of to survive under seemingly impossible conditions of deprivation and loss during the war in Sarajevo.  Ian Teh’s stark photography of industrial China (Traces: China 1999 - 2010) speaks volumes and Missing Out by Leila Aboulela tells the story of the collision of cultural values within a marriage.  Elizabeth McCracken’s Property shows the heart of a young widower as he struggles with his loss.

There is a previously unpublished excerpt from Mark Twain’s diaries, and a series of letters written over 30 years by Iris Murdoch to French writer Raymond Queneau. (It is believed that she destroyed his letters to her.)  It is tricky to find a favourite amidst such talent.

Since its inception in Cambridge, UK, in 1889, Granta has published the works of writers such as A. A. Milne, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Arundhati Roy and Sylvia Plath. It was rescued from oblivion in the 1970s, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Our Tragic Universe

by Scarlett Thomas ~ Thomas Allen & Son

  Review: Halifax Herald January 2011

           

Meg is a writer, just managing to get by writing book reviews and ghost writing genre fiction for adolescents, which nets her just enough cash to buy groceries and keep her damp basement apartment slightly above freezing.

Her moody, jealous boyfriend seems oblivious to the ever rising damp and Meg’s efforts to jolly him out of his funks are met with indifference at best.  It is hard to understand what Meg sees in this sad-sack boyfriend, and when she finally makes a break for freedom from both him and the damp-infested apartment, Thomas’s reader will be thankful and slightly puzzled as to what took her so long.

A book mysteriously arrives in the mail, The Science of Living Forever, a pseudo-scientific book

about the end of time.  The very idea stops Meg in her tracks. Instead of dismissing the content as pop-psyche at best, Meg is pulled into the book’s premise.  Her‘proper’ novel morphs into a ‘storyless’ story, untidy and plot-less.

Our Tragic Universe is brimming with existential energy and philosophical debates as Meg struggles to extricate herself from her marginal existence.  Once again, Thomas explores relationships and the human condition, but these explorations are tempered by the application of the ‘storyless’ story, which does mean that the plot (or non-plot) takes place primarily in the debates of the characters.  Our Tragic Universe meanders, as was Thomas’s intention.  However, the wit and nuance of her writing hold it together, making Meg’s story sympathetic and compelling.

Scarlett Thomas is a teacher, award-winning novelist and book reviewer. In 2002, she was listed as one of the twenty best young British writers.  She teaches at the University of Kent in the UK where she specializes in the contemporary novel and narrative theory and practice.

The Paper Garden: Mrs Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72

by Molly Peacock ~ McClelland & Stewart

~ Review: Halifax Herald, February 2011

Mary Granville Pendarves Delany was born into a minor branch of an important British family at the turn of the eighteenth century.  At the tender age of 17, this vivacious young woman was married off to a boorish drunkard old enough to be her grandfather, to improve the family fortunes.  She was widowed after seven difficult years.  She married again twenty years later, a union which afforded her much contentment and happiness, but it wasn’t until after the death of her second husband that Mrs Delany picked up scissors and paints and invented a medium now known as mixed-media collage.  She was 72.

Over the next ten years, Mrs Delany worked tirelessly at her art, creating botanically correct cut-paper flowers, precisely accurate in both detail and colour. These exquisite reproductions are often hard to recognize as paper and paint. In all, she produced 985 flowers, and it was her failing eyesight that finally stopped her.  The collection, known as Flora Delanica, is housed in the British Museum.

In The Paper Garden, Molly Peacock focuses on eleven of these extraordinary pieces of art, weaving through the narrative snippets of her own life as it parallels that of Mrs Delany’s. Her language is both visual and poetic, with an attention to detail that takes her readers into the heart of court life in eighteenth century England.

In the continuing debate about the future of print publications, McClelland & Stewart have triumphed. An electronic version of The Paper Garden would be a mere shadow, only hinting at the pleasure readers will get from this miniature art book.  The silken pages, the writing, the careful stitching, the wonderful reproductions, the subtle perfume of new ink, the size (it tucks perfectly in the corner of a bag) – these all combine to a whole that is a pleasure to hold and to read.  M & S and Molly Peacock have done Mrs Delany proud, and she would surely have been delighted.

Molly Peacock is a poet, essayist and author.  She was one of the creators of New York's Poetry in Motion program and is the Series Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English.  A transplanted New Yorker, she lives in Toronto.

Our Tragic Universe

by Scarlett Thomas ~ Thomas Allen & Son

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, January 2011

           

Meg is a writer, just managing to get by writing book reviews and ghost writing genre fiction for adolescents, which nets her just enough cash to buy groceries and keep her damp basement apartment slightly above freezing.

Her moody, jealous boyfriend seems oblivious to the ever rising damp and Meg’s efforts to jolly him out of his funks are met with indifference at best.  It is hard to understand what Meg sees in this sad-sack boyfriend, and when she finally makes a break for freedom from both him and the damp-infested apartment, Thomas’s reader will be thankful and slightly puzzled as to what took her so long.

A book mysteriously arrives in the mail, The Science of Living Forever, a pseudo-scientific book

about the end of time.  The very idea stops Meg in her tracks. Instead of dismissing the content as pop-psyche at best, Meg is pulled into the book’s premise.  Her‘proper’ novel morphs into a ‘storyless’ story, untidy and plot-less.

Our Tragic Universe is brimming with existential energy and philosophical debates as Meg struggles to extricate herself from her marginal existence.  Once again, Thomas explores relationships and the human condition, but these explorations are tempered by the application of the ‘storyless’ story, which does mean that the plot (or non-plot) takes place primarily in the debates of the characters.  Our Tragic Universe meanders, as was Thomas’s intention.  However, the wit and nuance of her writing hold it together, making Meg’s story sympathetic and compelling.

Scarlett Thomas is a teacher, award-winning novelist and book reviewer. In 2002, she was listed as one of the twenty best young British writers.  She teaches at the University of Kent in the UK where she specializes in the contemporary novel and narrative theory and practice.

Bride’s Farewell

by Meg Rosoff

Random House

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, October 2010

The day before her wedding, Pell suddenly sees the life of drudgery and dreariness that will be her future.  Poverty in 18^th century working class England is not kind to women and Pell sees the broken spirit of her mother clearly.  Her own spirit rebels and she flees in the night, taking Jack, her horse, and at the last minute her little brother who refuses to be left behind.  Her only plan is to head for the Salisbury Horse Fair, where she is sure she can make some money.

Pell has an unusual talent - an intuitive understanding of horses, akin to a ‘whisperer’.  It is this talent that catches the eye of a horse buyer.  They strike a deal, but the buyer swindles Pell of the promised money. Her brother and Jack become lost in the chaos after the fair and Pell is left with nothing. Her travels take a more desperate turn as she embarks on a search to recover those things most precious to her, and her money.

The Bride’s Farewell is a romantic adventure. Pell is a feisty heroine who would have held her own beside Nellie McClung or Emily Stowe, had time and circumstance allowed.  Rosoff’s writing is wonderfully visual, conjuring the reality of poor houses and the lives of the working class poor.  “... by the time Pell turned ten she and Lou had an expertise in stretching ends past straining point in an every-hopeful and ever-futile attempt to make them meet.” 

At the same time, Rosoff infuses her novel with love and laughter, in spite of the bleakness of everyday life.  From beginning to end is a flow of horses, as they are bought and sold, worked, ridden and loved.  Horses were an integral and essential part of eighteenth century life and Rosoff perfectly captures the magnificence of these creatures she so obviously loves.  And it is Rosoff’s beautiful imagery that leave her readers holding their breath, hoping the movie will come soon. 

Meg Rosoff has written three previous novels and is the winner of the Carnegie Medal for her novel Just in Case.  She lives in London, England.

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

by Xinran

Random House

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, August 2010

Between 1966 and 1979, China’s population almost doubled in size to a staggering 1.2 billion people.  Feeding this exploding population was an enormous challenge and, in an attempt to curb the escalating numbers, the “one family, one child” policy was instituted.  The consequences of this legislation have been cataclysmic for girl babies within a culture where male babies were already valued more highly, and for their mothers, especially those born into poorer, village families. Tradition dictated that “ ... the first surviving child had to be a boy or their lives would be blighted and they would not go to heaven.”

Xinran’s new book, Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love,

documents the harshness of obedience and the heartache of mothers forced to give up their baby daughters, to orphanages if they were lucky or to death if they were not.

This collection of ten firsthand stories is hard to read and even harder to understand within the cultural context of a country struggling out of feudalism and catapulting into the 21^st century. 

Villagers were “... torn between the enlightened standards of modern civilization and the cruelty of ancient traditions, where human feelings could lose their way.”

Xinran began her career on a radio show in China, giving a voice to women.  Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother focuses on the mothers who have lost their daughters. These babies may be lost from their mothers forever, adopted in the West, abandoned or even killed, but they are never forgotten.  “Chinese women lived on the bottom rung of society, unquestioning obedience was expected of them and they had no means of building lives of their own.”  But within the hearts of the mothers who bore them, these daughters are remembered and loved.  These are the stories of the Chinese mothers who saved their girls when they could and the message they send to their lost children is clear - perhaps we could not keep you, but you are mourned and always loved.

Xinran is a journalist and author. In 1997, she emigrated from China to England with her son.  She founded The Mothers’ Bridge of Love, a charity established to help disadvantaged Chinese children.  This is her sixth book.

Corvus: A Life with Birds

by Esther Woolfson

House of Anansi Press 

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, March 2010

Corvids, crows in particular, have had a bad rap over the centuries.  Their carrion role during the Black Plague gave them a distinctly ghoulish reputation, and Alfred Hitchcock, in his acclaimed movie, The Birds, didn’t help matters any.  And yet, “as with us all, human or bird, history has formed what corvids are.”

Esther Woolfson’s new book, Corvus: A Life with Birds details her lifelong love affair with birds in general and corvids in particular.  It all began when her daughter rescued Chicken, a fledging rook, who moved into the house and took over.  She did, however, allow Woolfson to continue to use a corner of her study by the window. 

Woolfson’s house becomes a sort of aviary.  Spike the magpie, Ziki the crow, Bardie, Marley the parrot, budgies, and cockatiels roam the rooms.  Her tales of their comic and oh! so human behaviour is written with love and affection, and her view on birds’ rights conveniently rationalizes her complete failure to even marginally house-train just one of her avian companions.

“Nothing, we discovered, is as gracious as a corvid. ... rituals worthy of Japanese life, On meeting in the hall of a morning, we bow.  She caws and I greet her.  We bow again.  She caws.  I bow.  She bows.  I ask after her health.  She caws.  Eventually, we reach the kitchen.”

Studies by Dr Louis Lefebvre (McGill University) show corvids to be the cleverest of birds, followed by falcons, hawks and woodpeckers.  This merely underscores what Woolfson already knows.  They respond to humour, fear, love and music.  Chicken has a distinct dislike for the works of Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messaien and, to a lesser degree, the Pogues.  She does, however, like Bach.”

“Was Chicken “once a dinosaur?  A small dinosaur, a maniraptor, but a dinosaur none the less?”  The disagreement about the lineage of birds continues, and Woolfson leaps into the fray. She has a keen eye for detail, and her writing carries a magical humour, whether relating the anecdotal or carefully teaching the evolution of birds and the mechanics of flight.  It is in her ability to blend this science, the natural history and the household stories that makes Corvus very very hard to put down.

Esther Woolfson was brought up in Glasgow and studied Chinese at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Edinburgh University.  She has won prizes for her nature writing, and her short stories have appeared in many anthologies.  She lives in Scotland.

Adrian Mole, The Prostrate Years

by Sue Townsend

Penguin Canada 

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, February 2010

Ever since the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and Three Quarters became a runaway success in 1982, Adrian Mole has continued to entertain his devoted followers. We have watched him grow up, get married and have children, though not necessarily in that order.  The life and times of Adrian Mole has kept us hugely entertained and Sue Townsend deserves multiple kudos for her comedic ability, especially in light of the content of her latest book which finds Adrian at an all time low.

Adrian Mole is a writer of bad, bad novels, even worse plays and a diarist extraordinaire.  Adrian Mole, The Prostrate Years finds him working in a used bookstore in Leicestershire, living in a converted pigsty which, in spite of gentrification, cannot shake its origins, and keenly aware that his marriage is less than idyllic.  His wife, Daisy, is a sophisticated city girl who hates country life and refuses to so much as purchase a pair of wellingtons.  The tantrums of his five year old daughter Gracie are no longer cute and his mother is considering an appearance on The Jeremy Kyle Show to publicly solve the mystery of his sister’s paternity.

Bad enough, but to make matters worse, Adrian’s frequent nightly visits to the bathroom are causing him enormous concern.  He suspects prostrate trouble.

Townsend’s sense of timing is perfect!  If you’re going to read this in public places, hold the book so the title is clearly visible.  It will explain stifled chuckles and smothered guffaws.

Sue Townsend was Britain’s best selling author of the 1980's for the Adrian Mole series.  She is also a well-known playwright and lives in Leicestershire, UK.

Deaf Sentence

by David Lodge

Harvill Secker (Random House)

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, July 2009

Desmond Bates is going deaf.  He is retired from his academic teaching post, bored, and facing a world of silence.  The imperfect technology of his hearing aids and his inability to stockpile the correct batteries make social events something to be endured, and he is becoming less and less willing to go out.  “When you can’t hear what people are saying, you have two options: either keep quiet and nod and murmur and smile . . . or talk non-stop on a subject of your own choosing ...”.  Neither method works well, he finds out to his enormous embarrassment.

At a cocktail party with his wife, he has an intense conversation with a young Ph.D. student, where he tries the ‘nod and smile’ method.  A phone call from her some days later, inquiring as to why he failed to keep their appointment to help her research her Ph.D., throws him into a quandary - should he tell his wife about this, or keep it a secret? Inexplicable guilt causes him to opt for the latter. The results are disastrous and hilarious.

Lodge seamlessly alternates between first and third person.  This shifting perspective highlights the retired Bates’ faltering esteem, and his dismal relationship with his father, who is sinking into dementia and “suspects a plot to defraud him is being hatched on the western seaboard of Scotland” (which, coincidentally, is the new location of the Inland Revenue).

Like Desmond Bates, Lodge is losing his hearing.  Unlike Bates, Lodge’s ability to see humour in otherwise difficult circumstances makes Deaf Sentence insightful and ‘laugh out loud’ funny. And as he succinctly points out, society seems to treat deafness as a cause for amusement and irritation rather than the difficult tragedy it is and the increasing alienation it causes.

Lodge writes with humour and grace. He doesn’t shirk the issues as Bates struggles to deal with the loss of his working life, his father’s deteriorating health, and the thousand tiny indignities of approaching old age. Not to mention the escalating ‘situation’ of the Ph.D. student!

David Lodge taught at Birmingham University, UK, specializing in Victorian fiction.  He has written more than 25 books, two of which were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.  He lives in Birmingham, UK. 

The Flying Carpet and Other Miracles: A Woman’s Fight to Save Two Orphans

by Hala Jaber

Viking Canada

~ Review in Halifax Herald, August 2009 

When Hala Jaber was sent to Iraq by the London Sunday Times, charged with finding an injured child to represent the face of the Iraqi war, she little knew that this would be the hardest assignment of her career. The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles is written straight from the heart of a long time war correspondent whose objectivity deserts her as she trails through hospitals after the attack on Baghdad.

In 2003, Baghdad was preparing for war. Pregnant women hurried to the hospital to deliver early if they could. Newborns were taken home and the city prepared for the worst.  But no preparations were enough to protect the innocent from what was to come. It was beyond imagining and civilian casualties were high.

Jaber’s search for a poster child of the Iraqi war brings her to a understaffed hospital where she finds two children with their mourning grandmother - Zahra, badly burned and struggling for life, and her infant sister who survived unharmed. The rest of their family was killed.  As Jaber watches Zahra’s desperate fight for life, her need to help these two innocents almost overwhelms her. “I sensed an obligation to remember every one of them, for Zahra, for myself.”

Often horrifying, at times funny and always tender, The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles is an intense, personal account of events that have not yet taken their place in history books. Jaber’s training as a correspondent and her compassion for the children of Iraq speaks straight to her readers’ hearts.  She does not sanitize events.  Her reporting is detailed, personal and powerful as she tells the stories of men and women whose greatest need was to protect their families from harm.  Nor does she shirk from showing us the terrible grief of those who survive to bury their dead. “My tears … are burning in my soul … an everlasting reminding of my anger.” The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles is a testament to the futility of war and terrible price it exacts from those most defenseless.

Hala Jaber was born in West Africa and grew up in Beirut.  She was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2005 and 2006, and won an award for her work in Iraq.  She lives in London.

Love’s Civil War

edited by Victoria Glendinning

McLelland and Stewart

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, September 2009

In wartime London, Charles Ritchie, a Canadian diplomat and Elizabeth Bowen, a successful author, meet at a christening. Their attraction is immediate and they begin an intense and passionate love affair.  Elizabeth is married, and while fond of her husband, she is unable to resist Ritchie.  For 30 years, they meet when they can, never spending more than a week in each other’s company and always reaching forward to the next liaison.

Charles’s position in the diplomatic corps takes him to live in Paris, New York, Ottawa and Bonn. Elizabeth’s letters follow him, letters of hope and love. She was a writer of her times and her letters are rich with descriptions of her days and of friends such as Iris Murdoch, Eudora Welty, Nancy Mitford and Virginia Woolf. But always her words speak of love and of her yearning for their next liaison.

Charles marries his cousin in hopes of companionship, and in one of life’s twists of fate, Elizabeth’s husband dies.  Guilt now complicates Ritchie’s life. “All we have to do now is to live our lives without too great discredit,” he writes.  Elizabeth asks “where am I to send telegrams to now?”

Love’s Civil War is a document of letters and diaries. Unfortunately, while Ritchie kept all Elizabeth’s letters, he destroyed his letters to her after her death in 1973.  His diaries are the only surviving record of his complicated life and they are less satisfying than Elizabeth’s letters, which are vibrant with a joy of life and everyday pleasures.  Ritchie’s diaries are short, and the sometimes terse entries are missing the flavour of reciprocity of feelings that must have been part of his emotional life. His final entry, however, speaks from the heart. “If she ever thought that she loved me more than I did her, she is revenged.”

Victoria Glendinning is an award winning biographer, broadcaster and novelist.  She lives in the UK.

Singing for Mrs Pettigrew, Stories and Essays from a Writing Life

by Michael Morpurgo

Candlewick Press

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, October 2009

Michael Morpurgo is also a teller of stories and it’s easy to see why he held the post of Children’s Laureate in Britain from 2003 to 2005.  The stories in Singing for Mrs Pettigrew speak directly to his chosen audience - children. He revels in the chance “to rediscover and indulge in that delightful and necessary conspiracy in which I suspend all the trials and tribulations I have come to know and share with them for a while the wondrous worlds of . . . Winnie-the-Pooh and Peter Rabbit.”  But whether it be stories for the young and the young at heart or stories of travel and musings, his understanding of the world and of people delightfully entertains.

Singing for Mrs Pettigrew is a collection of stories and essays, interspersed together to make a book of thoughtful book for both children and adults. His essays are sometimes travelogues as he wanders the English countryside, sometimes informative as he tells of Farms for City Children, a hugely successful venture which has given sixty thousand children a farm experience “harvesting, mucking out, feeding sheep and pigs and calves”, and sometimes instructional as he talks about his life as a writer.

Pen and ink sketches by Peter Bailey scatter through the pages, illuminating stories and essays alike.  I looked for a favourite, but found many.  My One and Only Great Escape tells of a young Morpurgo, at boarding school and desperately homesick, making a break for it.  The illustration alone is worth several pages! There is Yannick, a small boy sent to France for the summer holidays, who learns how to make crème brûlé for Picasso.  And there are whales and ghosts, unicorns and giants.

Morpurgo does not shirk from difficult subjects. The Giant’s Necklace is the story of Cherry, a young girl who becomes cut off by the tide while collecting shells.  Her struggle to climb above the rising sea and her encounter with the ghosts of miners long gone gently lead the reader toward an inevitable conclusion.  Masterfully done!

Singing for Mrs Pettigrew is a curl up and read aloud book, or a quiet, easy read-in-a-corner book for all ages. And it loudly speaks to the writers in us all. “Don’t pretend,” writes Morpurgo. “Tell your tale.  Speak with your own voice. We are what we write, I think, even more than we are what we read.”

Michael Morpurgo was the Children’s Laureate of Britain from 2003 to 2005 and has written more than 100 books.  He lives in Devon, England.

Granta 111: Going Back

Edited by John Freeman
House of Anansi Press

Short stories are often the first thing new writers publish.  They go in and out of popularity, and finding a home for that first story can be difficult.  Since it’s makeover in the 1970's, Granta has played a significant role in providing a market for new writers and artists, publishing short stories, photojournalism, poetry, biographies, indeed anything that is able to loosely fit within its pages.  It is indeed “The Magazine of New Writing”.

Going Back is a ‘themed’ issue based somewhat loosely on “what happens after we go back”. It diverges from Granta’s norm in that the writers and artists are well established. Editor John Freeman has put together a splendid collection of stories, poetry, art and photography about loss, memories, joy and finding the ability to let go.

Janine di Giovanni’s The Book of the Dead brings into sharp focus the human spirit’s ability of to survive under seemingly impossible conditions of deprivation and loss during the war in Sarajevo.  Ian Teh’s stark photography of industrial China (Traces: China 1999 - 2010) speaks volumes and Missing Out by Leila Aboulela tells the story of the collision of cultural values within a marriage.  Elizabeth McCracken’s Property shows the heart of a young widower as he struggles with his loss.

There is a previously unpublished excerpt from Mark Twain’s diaries, and a series of letters written over 30 years by Iris Murdoch to French writer Raymond Queneau. (It is believed that she destroyed his letters to her.)  It is tricky to find a favourite amidst such talent.

Since its inception in Cambridge, UK, in 1889, Granta has published the works of writers such as A. A. Milne, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Arundhati Roy and Sylvia Plath. It was rescued from oblivion in the 1970s, and the rest, as they say, is history.