I never thought cleverness had much to do with feeling.”Anna is speaking to the writer Robert Forde, Metcalf’s long-suffering fictional stand-in who appeared first in the short story “Travelling Northward” and again in the 2003 novella, Forde Abroad. Metcalf is a gifted satirist and very, very funny. The comic set-pieces on offer here — including, in “Medals and Prizes”, an hilarious Order of Canada ceremonial dinner filled with self-important CEOs of self-serving NGOs — are exceptional. And if that were all there was to Museum at the End of the World, it would be enough. For these stories have, at their core, a tenderness, a sadness, that is, at times, heart-rending.

Source: thestar October 23, 2016 03:56 UTC