Lisa Alward

May 9, 2024 | cbc.ca | Lisa Alward |Christine Estima |Paola Ferrante |Allison Graves

May is Short Story Month. Celebrate by checking out one of these great Canadian short story collections. Cocktail by Lisa AlwardCocktail is a short story collection by Lisa Alward. (Biblioasis, Maria Cardoso Grant)Cocktailis a short story collection that explores some of life's watershed moments and the tiny horrors of domestic life. Beginning in the 1960s and moving forward through the decades, Cocktail tells intimate and immersive stories about the power of desire — and the cost of pursuing it.

Nov 19, 2023 | reviewcanada.ca | Lisa Alward |Emily Latimer

In her memoir and guide to fiction writing, Bird by Bird, from 1994, the best-selling author Anne Lamott explained that she kept an empty one-inch picture frame on her desk as a reminder to focus on small details: “The river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry.” Cocktail is filled with this type of telling observation.

Aug 22, 2023 | tnq.ca | Lisa Alward

My story ideas usually begin with an image, a mental picture of something I witnessed or experienced or that someone told me about. For “Little Girl Lost,” that image was a young girl’s sullen face pressed up against a window. My father’s family were related, through marriage, to the Saint John artist Miller Brittain. Once, in the early 1960s, when my father was back in Saint John for Christmas, his mother asked him to drive a box of presents to Miller’s house, out near the airport.

Jul 24, 2023 | tnq.ca | Lisa Alward

On a foggy September morning in 1960, Debbie stands by a French door in an old house in Saint John watching a young couple talk on the side lawn. The man in the couple is her future brother-in-law, Wally, and the woman his wife of two years, Aline. Although she’s wearing heels, Aline’s head barely rises above the socked clubs in the golf bag perched between them. She’s petite.

Jun 8, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Lisa Alward |James McBride

Intelligent and thoughtful but not quite at this groundbreaking writer’s usual level of excellence. An obscure English novelist and a missing-heir trial are the real historical springboards for Smith’s latest fiction. Eliza Touchet is cousin and housekeeper to William Ainsworth, whose novel Jack Sheppard once outsold Oliver Twist but who, by 1868, has been far eclipsed by his erstwhile friend Dickens. Widower William is about to marry his maid Sarah Wells, who has borne him a child.