Big Reader; Essays
Praise for Big Reader
“If these essays were glass bells and you struck them one by one with your favourite pen, they would ring with the purest, clearest notes, each chapter in its singularity contributing to the gorgeous orchestral music that this book is. Olding has found exactly the right balance between the details of her life and the wide reach of research and obsession. The book pays tribute to what the essay has done in its long and honourable past and what it continues to do in the hands of a remarkable thinker and wordsmith.” —Lorna Crozier, author of Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats)
About the Book
A book about memory, loss, and a love of books from one of Canada's finest essayists.
Ever since childhood, Susan Olding has been a big reader, never without a book on the go. Not surprising, then, that she turns to the library to read her own life. From the dissolution of her marriage to the forging of a tentative relationship with her new partner's daughter, from discovering Toronto as a young undergrad to, years later, watching her mother slowly go blind: through every experience, Olding crafts exquisite, searingly honest essays about what it means to be human, to be a woman--and to be a reader.
Big Reader is a brilliant, achingly beautiful collection about the slipperiness of memory and identity, the enduring legacy of loss, and the nuanced disappointments and joys of a reading life.