Alison Acheson

This is a terrific book. You might be prone to think its just another book about a loved one caring for their spouse with a terminal disease - but I assure you it is not. The author (the wife of a husband with ALS) leaves nothing out. Her story is raw, emotional, honest, humorous, happy, sad; emotion after emotion and everyone can relate to her regardless of your situation. I couldn't put this down and finished it in one day. Her writing style is so great I was feeling her exhaustion just from reading it and yet she continued to find her inner strength to keep on going for her own sake as well as her sons and husband. This is not a story about sadness and disease but the strength of a woman and her rediscovery of love for her husband and life.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Ingram Publisher Services for an advanced e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.… (mais)

Alison Acheson’s Learning to Live Indoors is an interesting collection of short stories. Published by The Porcupine’s Quill, the book feels good in your hands. It is printed on high-quality Zephyr Antique sheets of paper that have been “folded and sewn into signatures in the traditional manner” (back cover). As soon as it arrived in the mail, I was eager to read the book, but as I began, the uniqueness of the stories immediately became apparent. They are original and hard to classify. Most of them resist the typical modified Freytag pyramid structure readers encounter. Some of the stories seem more like scenes pulsating with a rhythm appropriate to that story alone.

The stories often invite you to reread them searching for significant details that are perhaps floating, perhaps embedded firmly, perhaps jutting in suddenly like a blade of light. And they contain many excellent sentences. Here are a few samples. In “Murray Would,” we read: “He’d learned the trickery of the light voice from his mother, a woman who had struggled for years to hew life into an uncomplicated thing. There shouldn’t be ghosts between people, she always said, and if there are ghosts, they shouldn’t be named” (11). In “Gingerbread,” “I liked the feel of Nathan’s hand on my shoulder, pulling me toward the adjoining room with the great mahogany and green table, the low hanging light fixture that shadowed the high ceiling, the racks of cues, the balls bright and chunky as toys” (24). In “Learning to Live Indoors,” “Ezra seemed to want to fill his first year with many more. He crawled early, and five days later pulled himself up on the furniture and the walls—he’d straightened his legs and walked in the air since birth” (37). In “Across the Hall,” “Will he notice the dress? It hangs so, and moves too much when she walks. It used to move with her—now it sweeps around, looking for flesh” (43). In “Cutting,” “Or perhaps it was the cross clinging to her neck that made Geoff liken the two women. There was something so familiar about it: the heaviness and the tired glint of worn diamond chips” (75). In “Family Allowance,” “Shallow-rooted cottonwoods moved over our heads, and the wind brought us raindrops that were waiting in the elbows of their branches” (93). And in “Somebody’s Steed,” “In the morning the sun rose over an odd grouping on the rooftop: a circle of children gathered around a figure in white and blue, long hair waving in the wind. Hair mostly silver, a touch of red. Generous people would even say chestnut” (155).

My two favorite stories in the collection are “Second Week of October,” a fascinating account of a family dog shipped off to the SPCA only to be recovered once the family finally notices he is missing, and “Fervent Charity,” an extraordinary story about an isolated spiritual community. Here are a few of its superb sentences: “. . . she spent the morning hours there, working the [pine] cones into circles or into story-patterns like the stars” (118); “They walked until the sun was low, its thread about to snap” (122); and, “She turned, saw the fire through the open doorway, heard the crackle, of pines remembering what it was like to feel heat, remembering to open to the flame, to spit seed” (123).

Acheson’s stories are a good read. I encourage you to spend some unrushed time with them.… (mais)

A train whistles in the distance and just like everyday the little girl can hear the train approaching from the west. She stands by the window and waves just like every day.

A Little House in a Big Place by Alison Acheson and Valériane Leblond is a lyrical story about growing up and moving on. The train goes by everyday and night and the little girl always waves to the engineer and he waves back until it’s his last day and he throws something special out the train window for the girl. The girl grows up and as she grows knows the train can take her anywhere, to great adventures. It’s a lovely story perfect for the end of the day and a nice cuddle up. Valériane Leblond has created some beautiful page spreads really capturing the wide fields of rustling grasses and the girl’s keen interest in the train. The illustrations are so textural and vivid, creating the rural home of the girl and her family.

On a personal note, the story really brought me back to my childhood. The first time I travelled on my own was by train from a small town through a big city and a transfer to another train and to another small town. I loved those travels on my own, independant and free. The train is such a lovely mode of transportation, the gentle rocking and clickety-clacking along the rails. The whistles at the street crossings and the comings and goings of the travelers are all so calming and safe. Also, this book reminds me of my grandmother’s house, a small house with a wide field behind leading to the train tracks. She still lives in that house and anytime we go to visit the train is still there, travelling east and west, a constant. If you have ay personal connection to trains or train travel or leaving home to make your way in the world, you will really connect to this story. What a lovely gift to give to our young readers, to let them know they can have big dreams and can travel near and far… (mais)