Showing results by author "Gayla Reid" in All Categories

This is the story of a lifelong friendship between two women that passionately lasts despite long separations and differences in time, geography, and lifestyle. Deirdre and Bernadette, who share a childhood and an Australian convent school education, each make different choices, landing them in places as diverse as Vietnam, England, and Argentina, but they remain alert and emotionally connected through their friendship.

In England, in the spring of 1939, Clancy, an Australian nurse, waits with her infant daughter for news of her lover, who was a volunteer with the Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. As she waits, Clancy shares with her daughter the story of her own childhood in the Australian bush and her disastrous marriage to an English archaeologist. When the Spanish Civil War erupted, Clancy volunteered on the Republican side. Her chance for happiness amid the chaos came when she met the young Canadian Douglas Ross.

In the tradition of Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, Gayla Reid's brilliant new effort, Closer Apart, is filled with striking images and evocative descriptions. Following her critically acclaimed novel All the Seas of the World, Closer Apart is a collection of linked stories depicting three generations of the McGinty family. In the opening story, "Almost Touching", we are introduced to Frank, whose affair with Violet brings his own marriage to Millicent into relief and sheds light on just how "close and apart" the two women are.