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Pale Shadows
Pale Shadows | Dominique Fortier
2 posts | 1 read | 1 reading | 5 to read
FEATURED ON LITHUB CBC BOOKS: 2024 SPRING FICTION PREVIEW Dickinson after her death: a novel of the trio of women who brought Emily Dickinson’s poems out of the shadows When she died, Emily Dickinson left behind hundreds of texts scribbled on scraps of paper. She also left behind three formidable women: her steadfast sister, Lavinia; her brother’s ambitious mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd; and his grief-stricken wife, Susan Gilbert Dickinson. With no clear instructions from Emily, these three women would, through mourning and strife, make from those scraps of paper a book that would change American literature. From the author of Paper Houses, this is the improbable, almost miraculous, story of the birth of a book years after the death of its author. In these sensitive and luminous pages, Dominique Fortier explores, through Dickinson’s poetry, the mysterious power that books have over our lives, and the fragile and necessary character of literature.
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TheKidUpstairs
Pale Shadows | Dominique Fortier
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“Emily's poems are bolts of lightning, flashpoints on which Susan burns her hands and her eyes. She spends the morning and then the afternoon slowly reading them over, sometimes holding the same lines cupped in her palm for twenty, thirty minutes, squeezing so tight that she feels blood beating in her fingertips.
They form the short verses of a secret gospel. They are magic formulas...

cont'd

TheKidUpstairs ...Speak them in the right order, with the right rhythm, and a dove appears, a flame from a hat, a wreath of daisies; say them backwards and grasshoppers rain down, the sun splits in two, the stars go out in the sky, the world is extinguished“ 14h
monalyisha Oh, hell yeah. Is that an eloquent enough response to such eloquent prose? 😅 STRAIGHT up the TBR line! 13h
TheKidUpstairs @monalyisha 😂 😂 It's the perfect response! 13h
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review
LiteraryHoarderPenny
Pale Shadows | Dominique Fortier
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A beautifully written (and translated) love letter to Emily Dickinson and also a beautifully written exploration of grief. I do hope this beautiful piece of literary fiction is moved to the Shortlist for the Carol Shields Prize. #CanLit @Lindy

Lindy I had already made plans to buddy read this in August 2025 before the Carol Shields longlist was announced. Glad to hear you enjoyed it. 😊 4w
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