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Biography & Autobiography. Travel. Nonfiction. HTML:The long-awaited new book from the acclaimed short story writer, author of The Elizabeth Stories and You Never Know. Belonging is pure pleasure to read �?? entertaining, beautifully written, laced with gentle humour and perceptive insights. Shifting from memoir to fiction, it focuses on the commonplace experiences underlying our lives that are the true basis for storytelling. At the book�??s core is Isabel Huggan�??s old house in rural France, from where she contemplates the real meaning of �??home,�?� and the mysterious manner in which memory gives substance to ordinary things around us. With a light touch, she brings to life the people she has met in her travels from whom valuable lessons have been learned. Isabel Huggan writes with the candour and compassion that made her earlier books so well loved, and here she speaks even more clearly from the heart. Belonging is an intimate conversation between the narrator… (more)
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Canadian author Isabel Huggan & her husband fell in love with southern France on a holiday trip there and decided to relocate their home to where they had left their hearts. They intended it to be ‘home’, not a holiday house nor a second home but their permanent
I choose to think that those of us who settle here permanently—définitivement—are more kindly looked upon than those who just drop in for a few weeks of sunny weather. But I may be fooling myself.
Huggan explores the concept of ‘belonging” not only in relation to fitting in and becoming a part of the French community, but also in relation to no longer ‘belonging’ in Canada when they visit.
Although I had initially thought that the part about acclimatizing to France would be the bit that ‘spoke’ to me, her thoughts on no longer belonging to her native land resonated more with me. I was born and raised and lived the first 48 years of my life in Ontario, but now that we have been in Nova Scotia for nearly 15 years, we find Ontario to be a foreign country when we visit.
It’s well worth reading this lovely narrative.
4 stars