Tag: Brick 91

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

¿Le Gusta Este Jardín Que Es Suyo? ¡Evite Que Sus Hijos No Lo Destruyan! It was so long ago but it holds up as one of those transfixing reads—snatch this book out of my hands at your own risk. I . . .

Xmas in Hawaii

She was eighteen and just out of high school. He was twenty-eight and just out of prison. Her name at that time was Maryann Bray, although it had replaced the name she was given at birth. His name at that . . .

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

From a very early age—all the way back to my first grade reader, A Pig Can Jig—I have always skipped to the last page of a book and read the ending. Once I’m engaged by a story (usually within . . .

Index of Themes

In this podcast, Ben Lerner reads his poem, “Index of Themes.” In our Brick 91, you can also read Catherine Bush’s interview with Lerner, where they talk about his novel Leaving the Atocha Station. . . .

An Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga

*Note: In this 2013 interview, Tsitsi Dangarembga discusses a book called Chronicle of an Indomitable Daughter which was later published as This Mournable Body, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. In 1988, at the age of twenty-eight, Tsitsi Dangarembga published . . .

#3: “Der Greis” by Franz Joseph Haydn

For our special feature on endings in Brick 91, Jan Zwicky took a different tack than her fellow contributors. Instead of focusing on the ending of a beloved short story or novel, she moved us with her interpretation of a . . .

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

I first read Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels in 1999 when my son was a newborn. Each book is so short it can be easily held in one hand, the pages turned with the thumb, perfect for breastfeeding. Short they may be, . . .

“The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street” by Mavis Gallant

Perhaps one reason why I so love the ending of Mavis Gallant’s story “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street” is that I’ve never quite understood it. I always think that if I reread it one more time, its meaning . . .

“The Closing Down of Summer” by Alistair MacLeod

This short story seems wholly about endings. It’s set during the embers of August and at the edge of a continent. It’s in the voice of an old miner who, with his longtime crew, is awaiting his next and possibly . . .

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

At the end of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, after a dusk-to-dawn prostration before God at the altar of his church, John, the fourteen-year-old protagonist, gives his soul to Christ. On the penultimate page of the . . .

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

I read Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son in 1995 when I was in graduate school, and it’s affected every ending I’ve ever written since. Even the endings to emails. In case you haven’t read it, the book is called a short . . .