Odd connections

[sawyl]

Despite being two of my favourite novels by two of my favourite novelists, I'd not picked up on the temporal overlap between The Robber Bride and The Crow Road until prompted by Jo Walton:

The present tense of the story is set very precisely in 1989 and ’90—coincidentally, the exact same time as Atwood’s The Robber Bride, which I read last week. The First Gulf War is mentioned in both books. One of the characters in The Crow Road goes to Canada, but when I wonder if she’ll encounter the characters from The Robber Bride, my brain explodes. Toronto and Gallanach—or maybe just Atwood and Banks—are clearly on different planets. And yet there are similarities. Both books have a present and long flashbacks into the past—The Crow Road goes back to Prentice’s father’s childhood. Still, different planets. Different assumptions about how human beings are.