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Ann Copeland jumps over the convent wall with Season of Apples, a book of stories about ordinary people surprised by their own sudden growth. With their special brand of serious good humour, Copeland’s characters gently push readers towards their own self-knowledge. Men and women of all ages star in Season of Apples, and all find themselves at some kind of threshold or on the brink of a life change.

In “Another Country,” a mother finally connects with her own mother when she recognizes, in the midst of her son’s dangerous illness, that “each generation is another country.” A woman playing the piano for an Easter service in a home for the aged knows the frailty of human individuality, her own included, in “On the Other Side.” In the title story, Leora May, colourless, habit-ridden, and chained to her small-town routine, rediscovers her capacity for joy when she’s chosen to act in a television commercial. And, in the hilarious, odd, yet moving “Why Eat Pot Roast When You Can Sing?” identical twins Flor and Chlor sing through their lives with pianist Learned and drummer Free, and Flor and Learned’s terrific tap-dancing son Robert.

Author

Ann Copeland, a native of Connecticut, lived in Sackville, New Brunswick, for twenty-five years before moving to Salem, Oregon, in 1996. A popular fiction writing instructor at workshops in Canada, the US, and New Zealand, she is the author of The ABCs of Writing Fiction and six books of stories. The Golden Thread, linked stories about Sister Claire Delaney, was a finalist for a 1990 Governor General’s Award; “Another Christmas,” first published in the Fiddlehead, is part of Strange Bodies on a Stranger Shore, the sequel to The Golden Thread.

Reviews

“Ann Copeland’s stories hover around moments of timeless transcendence.” Toronto Star

“Her writing is both beautiful and elegant.” New York Times Book Review

Details

216 pages
Pub date: October 1, 1996