Jagged glass and feathers
Writer Michelle Butler Hallett: the light and dark sides of a swiftly tilting planet
By Susan Rendell
Monday, May 05, 2008
Monday, May 05, 2008
“Hallett seems often to be creating from a subliminal place, riding on intuition …”
— The Globe and Mail (review of The Shadow Side of Grace)
Walking downtown to meet local writer Michelle Butler Hallett is making me feel pretty virtuous, physically and spiritually. I’m not out of breath, although a polar wind has one arm across my windpipe and I haven’t walked anywhere except around the house in over a week.
I’m moving serenely through the Wasteland: the streets are bare except for dog leavings, whirling dervish plastic bags and shrouded figures trying to protect themselves from spring’s psychotic resistance to itself.
But not even leering clumps of rotten-toothed snow can put a cramp in my soul today. I’m eager to spend some time with Hallett, who’s something of an enigma to me. We have a nodding acquaintance, and I’ve read and admired The Shadow Side of Grace, her 2006 collection of short stories, and her 2007 novel, Double Blind...
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Susan Rendell is the author of a short story collection, In the Chambers of the Sea, available as an unabridged audio book from Rattling Books narrated by Anita Best, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings, Joel Hynes, Susan Rendell, Janet Russell, Janis Spence, Francesca Swann and Agnes Walsh.
