![]() ![]() ![]() Her searches for such items in flea markets and out-of-the-way corners of cities both far (Stanley, Falkland Islands, and Marrakech, Morocco) and near (Vancouver) form a brilliant frame for her travel narrative. Hodgson, the author of illustrated novels such as The Lives of Shadows and The Sensualist, is an impassioned lover of life’s detritus – playing cards tucked into cast-off books, old newspapers, long-expired IOU notes – because she sees in them clues to fascinating lives and connections to times past. ![]() How else can one describe the scene in which Hodgson digs through a garbage can in Aleppo, Syria, looking for housing deeds from the 1930s and ’40s, or the one in which she sneaks around alleys and main streets after dusk in Naples to tear posters off walls? In a time when words like “charming” and “quirky” are frequently and undeservedly used to describe bland chick-lit heroines and actresses, Barbara Hodgson’s exploration of curious and cast-off items truly merits the adjectives. ![]()
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