Well Read November - with Maureen Hunter

An accomplished playwright, Maureen Hunter has had work produced on major stages across Canada, and in the UK and US. One of the award-winning writer’s most recent works was a libretto based on her acclaimed play The Transit of Venus for Manitoba Opera.

I’ve just finished reading The Road Home by Rose Tremain. She’s one of my favorite novelists. Most of her work is historical fiction, but this book is set in contemporary Britain. It’s about a man from Eastern Europe who migrates to England in search of work. He begins with no job, hardly any money and only a few words of English. From the opening pages, you’re rooting for him; by the end of the story, you want to be part of his life forever.

I’m currently reading The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton. He’s a brilliant British writer with a wide range of interests. In this book, he draws on other writers, artists and thinkers (Flaubert, Wordsworth, Van Gogh) to examine why we travel and what we might do to make it even more fulfilling. I love to travel and I love to read about travel, so this book was right up my alley.

 
Next I’m going to revisit Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, a Norwegian writer. It’s a novel about an old man living in an isolated part of Norway who happens to meet someone he knew in the summer of his fifteenth year. The reunion stirs up painful memories and forces him to look back on his life. I remember being impressed by how seamlessly Petterson moved from the voice of the old man to the voice of his younger self. He’s a masterful writer and a keen observer of the human heart, and this book is well worth a second look.