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Review by Gabrielle Blondell It can be weird, eerie even, after a relationship breaks down. Try as we might to stay singular in a partnership, there is a blurring of lines. We borrow from each other – ideas, beliefs, underpants. It’s easier that way, economic. So when the relationship dissolves, it’s a wrench. We are left with pieces missing. It’s not just who we are now that is the challenge. It’s how we have changed since the last time we were single. A metamorphosis has occurred and moving on seems so difficult with our newly partial selves. Haruki Murakami’s novel, Killing Commendatore, reminds me ofRead More →

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by Gabrielle Blondell Max was running the blade of the trimmer along the top of a hedge when the removal van came to a wheezy standstill in front of the house next door. He stood on his toes, still trimming away, but squinting through his safety glasses. Bruich Removals, it said, white lettering on black across the side of the van. A dark grey, sporty sedan came next and a man emerged from it. He strode up the path of the neighbouring house to the front door, jostling in his pocket and extracting a bunch of keys. “Sorry lads,” he called to the two brick-shapedRead More →

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We yearn. The best of us do anyway and we struggle. Most often the struggle is carried on inside our minds as we attempt to bound and then rebound off walls we’ve built ourselves from beliefs we’ve had or adopted from…..goodness knows where. And this could be seen as futile and perhaps wisely so, if it were not for there being something noble, something best called human in the most fragile sense of the word, in the yearning and the struggling. It is the fact that we may not succeed which is the thing. We teeter on this knife’s edge, windmilling our arms this wayRead More →

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By Gabrielle Blondell I see everything and by this I mean I see too much. I’ll give you an example. Right now, my work colleague, Jonah, is walking down the hall and I know, at the very last minute, he will veer toward me and perform one of two actions. A) He will try out a joke on me; one that he may or may not be put to work later on people he actually wants to impress, or B) he will angle his hips in my direction and practice one of his pick-up lines, like ‘How’s it going sweetie?’ I have started to lookRead More →

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“Wherever human beings dream of a dignified and free society in which they can harvest the fruits of their own labor, The Grapes of Wrath’s radical voice of protest can still be heard.”  Robert DeMott says this in his introduction to the Penguin edition of Steinbeck’s depression era novel and its difficult to get past it.  Of course, I read the introduction after I’d finished the novel, so the bit about getting past it is a lie.  What I mean is I could not find other better words to describe what I was left with once the reading was done. There was churning in theRead More →

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In: The Making of Numb, Writing

To get to the end of a first draft is a marvellous thing.  It’s hard to know how it happened.  It involves a kind of alchemy.  All manner of things, known and unknown go into it and finally, there it is.  We know, if we are worth our salt, there is more to be done.  Sometimes, there is much more.  We have wandered from the path, dithered about in the wilderness, trying this and that, before we return to the true tale.  We are struck by false epiphanies, which take us places we never meant to go – the severed head of our main character,Read More →

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How is it that the child’s eyes have the wonder still attached? Reading Michael Ondaatje’s novel, The Cat’s Table reminds me of this. I’m jealous of his story. I want to be that eleven year old aboard a great ocean liner with no adult supervision. I do. The freedom of it, the waking early to swim in the first class pool, napping in the afternoon down in the turbine room so as to stay up late and catch glimpses of a transported prisoner as he exercises on deck. It smells of childhood. To be considered the least important of passengers and placed at ‘the cat’sRead More →

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In: Writing

To journal or not to journal? I’m often asked as a writer whether I keep a journal and the truth is it has been, until recently, rather off and on. I’d keep up the practice for a year or more and then for years I wouldn’t. It depended how I was feeling at the time. If I was under stress or suffering an ongoing emotional upset, I would scribble away in a journal to work things out. When I was happy and things were purring along, the journal remained closed. Why journal? I’m starting to see there are other reasons to journal though, and soRead More →

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In: Stories, Uncategorized

By Gabrielle Blondell Alapai watches the young people enter. It is his first sight of them and he is careful with it. He makes sure to notice the one who holds the shoulders curved forward and defeated. He looks too for the one who holds them high to the ears, defensive. He knows on sight who is dating whom by the way they move together.   They sit as if their race chooses for them. Tongan with Tongan. Maori with Maori. White with white. Samoan with Samoan. Somali with Somali. “Good morning, students,” Alapai says. “Please settle yourselves.” He takes a whiteboard marker and writes inRead More →

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In: Freedom, Love, Telling it True

I approach it gingerly as though I’m not looking, but I am.  I always look.  I have been looking at this place my entire life. I pull into the driveway and park beside a mini-skip.  It is bashed in on one side where I imagine someone has backed into it.  I hate the skip.  It reminds me we are selling our family home, my sister and I.  We are being practical, grownups, now our are parents are gone.  It is up to us to be wise.  You see, if we sell we will be more financially secure.  If we don’t, we will need to spendRead More →