Up in Ontario

Globe and Mail Review of Up in Ontario

I awoke on Saturday morning to an email in my inbox from the lovely and talented Adrienne Guthrie in Toronto. "Congratulations" read the subject line. The body went like this:

Yay, you're in the Globe this morning! What a nice surprise and great review.
Congrats and hope the launch last night was a lot of fun.

A.

I fired up a web browser and pointed it at the Globe and Mail front page. I searched for 'sherrett' and there she was, "Parent Trouble? Bear with it." I did a little dance. I read the first few sentences and then stopped. I wanted to buy a copy of the paper and read it as it was meant to be read, with the ink staining my fingertips.

My friend Riggs met me at the front door of our building. He was coming by to pick up a pair of glasses left by someone he knew the night before at Live at the Lake. I told him about the review and he told me that we had to get ourselves a copy. We walked down to the corner store and found they had already sold out of their allotment of Globe and Mails. We crossed the street, spotted a letter box, and spent the next few minutes wrestling with the coin-operated demon. Finally we pried it open and plucked the last two copies of the paper from its gaping maw. Riggs spread the paper open there on top of the letter box and pointed at the review, page D5.

We skimmed over the article and then stopped into the Epicurean coffee shop for a shot of strong joe and an orange-almond cookie so good you want to kill yourself. Riggs explained to me how fortunate I was to get a review in the Globe, that many first novels are published every year and only a few get reviewed. I just sat there and felt tired and elated.