There's a Larkin Verse I Could Quote Here

Richard McCann does an interview with Conversational Reading about Mother of Sorrows, "a wonderful, quiet collection of interlocking short stories that describe the coming-of-age and subsequent life of a gay man." McCann's reputation is spreading throughout the blogosphere; the Happy Booker is also a big fan.

"Initially [McCann says], I believed that I was writing Mother of Sorrows to find my own perspective and my own way of telling family stories; I wanted, that is, to free myself from family myths in order to discover what I took to be my own version of 'what happened.'  In the end, however, I see this was a more complicated effort:  that the effort to free myself from my family's myths was also a way of holding tight to my family in words forever."

It's worth noting that H.B. calls McCann's book a novel when she speaks to him. Novel or short stories? It's an issue that's come up with a lot of books lately; Philip Hensher recently explored the subject starting with Tim Winton's latest and working his way back, but it's funny that instead of discussing any American literature, he cites Robert Altman's Short Cuts (a "clear misreading" of Raymond Carver shorts, though "highly fruitful" in Hensher's view) and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.