May 14, 2008

Double Lives nets excellent reviews

"Doubles Lives is a provocative collection … The majority [of the essays] are so well written that they undermine at least part of the book's premise … However difficult it may have been, especially for the young mothers, to find the personal space, the musing time or simply a brain to write with, they did it and did it well.
There are as many types of domestic situations depicted here as there are writing styles … Reading these very personal and moving essays, I realize that it is the lucky ones who have merely double lives."
--Dede Crane, The Globe and Mail.

"Writer-mothers whose children are grown and who read this book will recall those long-ago days when we struggled to meet our own need for self-expression as well as the needs of our children. But this collection should especially be read by new mothers -- and fathers -- hoping to continue or begin writing professionally."
--Monique Polak, Montreal Gazette.

"Double Lives is full of tales of mothers trying to eke out a writing career while raising, sometimes alone and on welfare, small children.
Some of the stories are gruelling, the way birth stories tend to be -- difficult to read, but equally difficult to put down. There are tales of snatches of poetry written in the middle of the night between a baby's bouts of squalling, of writers who were young and single mothers but still managed to find time and space to write during the in-between hours, and plenty of stories of mothers wracked by guilt that they are not doing either job well."
-- Elizabeth Payne, The Ottawa Citizen.

"Double Lives … sets up on camp directly on the teeming anthill that is writing with children … [The anthology] reaches further [than other similar anthologies] in attempting to create a community for writers through writing, which is the best way to reach bookish girls anyways."
--Ariel Gordon, Winnipeg Free Press.

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