Recently Released
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Recently Caught
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Social Links
Bookish Quotes
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
The Wives of Bath
|
The Wives of Bath
Buy from one of these Booksellers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
|
I read this book when it was first released in 1993, and loved it. I have to decide now whether to release this copy immediately (I found it yesterday at the Mennonite Central Committee charity shop in Kelowna), or re-read then release it. (Left: author Susan Swan)
|
|
|
|
|
I decided to re-read The Wives of Bath before releasing it. Unfortunately, I wasn't as enamoured with the book the second time around. More than ten years have elapsed between my first and second readings of the book, and themes that seemed quite captivating and original in 1993 -- i.e. social relations between school-aged girls and transgenderism -- were a little less so in 2004. That said, Susan Swan deserves significant credit for creating a believable female-to-male transgendered character, bringing the issue out of the closet long before Hilary Swank did so in Boys Don't Cry.The Wives of Bath takes place in 1963 at the fictional Bath Ladies College in Toronto (based on Toronto's Havergal College, where Swan was once a student). As the novel begins, Mary Beatrice "Mouse" Bradford has just been enrolled (read: abandoned) as a boarder at the college by her workaholic father, Morley, and alcoholic stepmother Sal. At the college, Mouse meets Pauline "Paulie" Sykes and her brother Lewis, and Paulie's great friend (if polar opposite), Victoria "Tory" Quinn. Tory is in love with Lewis, or so we understand at the beginning of the novel, and Mouse must find a way to fit in with this difficult trio. Part murder mystery and part coming-of-age novel, in 2001 The Wives of Bath was made into the feature film Lost and Delirious (the screenwriter was acclaimed Canadian playwright Judith Thompson, and the film was directed by Léa Pool). Swan's essay on the process of turning the book into a feature film is available online here. Susan Swan is an associate professor in the Division of Humanities at York University. Her other books include The Biggest Modern Woman of the World (1983), Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With and What Casanova Told me (2004). Visit Susan Swan's official website here. (Photo: Havergal College, the real-life Bath Ladies College) |
|
|
|
|
Released on Monday, December 06, 2004 at about 4:00:00 PM BX time (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) at Starbucks 6th and Columbia in New Westminster, British Columbia Canada.RELEASE NOTES: I'll be dropping this book off at Starbucks on Columbia Street around 2 pm today. It's snowing out (!), and I'm looking forward to bundling up, going out and enjoying an hour of reading over a good cup of coffee. |
|
|
|
