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From the archives

Dangerous Grounds

Coming soon to a democracy near you

The Collapse of Syria

The story of a nation’s unravelling, one neighbourhood at a time

Trompe Le Toil

The modern conundrum of overwork

Kate Taylor

Kate Taylor writes about film and culture for the Globe and Mail. Her most recent novel, Serial Monogamy, is now available in paperback.

Articles by
Kate Taylor

The Mother as Spider

Being a woman and an artist in the world June 2018
Towards the end of Rachel Cusk’s new novel Kudos, the narrator, a novelist, is interviewed by three journalists in a plush hotel in an old European city. The narrator has previously appeared in both Outline and Transit, the first two titles in this provocative and innovative literary…

Non-disclosure

In her anti-confessional new novel, Rachel Cusk uncovers in others what it feels like to be human March 2017
In 2009, the English novelist Rachel Cusk wrote The Last Supper, a memoir about a trip to Italy; a month after it appeared, its publisher was forced to withdraw the first print run and pulp the books because somebody had recognized himself and was threatening to sue for breach of privacy. Cusk has also been excoriated by the British press for her memoirs about motherhood and divorce: the major complaint seems to be have been that she was not a nice…

Shaking the Family Tree

Emotionally absent parents continue to mark Mary Lawson's characters. April 2014
In Mary Lawson’s new novel, Road Ends, the young but determined Megan Cartwright is the most hopeful of three unhappy protagonists. Having spent her childhood and adolescence looking after the many brothers that her maternity-addled mother and emotionally absent father were too preoccupied to care for themselves, she finally escapes Northern Ontario at the age of 21 and makes it to London in…

Ideas under Glass

As museums turn from artifacts to stories, cultural tensions arise April 2013
Many institutions can lay claim to an uplifting foundation myth, but the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights boasts not one but two. There is the story that Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was so moved by a visit to Auschwitz in 1999 that he declared a site would finally be found for a Canadian Holocaust…

Palace on the Rideau

How a national institution tries to play to a local audience. November 2009
When veteran arts administrator Elaine Calder agreed to act as a temporary manager at the National Arts Centre in 1998, the place was in crisis: the Ottawa institution was running an unexpected deficit and had fired two CEOs in four years. On her arrival, Calder met with her development officer to check that at least a $1 million gift from hockey player Alexei Yashin was…