Before winning recognition for her painting and writing, Emily Carr built a small apartment building with four suites that she hoped would earn her a living. But things turned out worse than expected, and in her forties, the gifted artist found herself shoveling coal and cleaning up other people's messes. The House of All Sorts is a collection of forty-one stories of those hard-working days and the parade of tenants -- young couples, widows, sad bachelors and rent evaders. Carr is at her most rueful, but filled with energy and an inextinguishable hope. Carr also ran a small kennel and bred bobtails to help out her meagre income. In an additional twenty-five stories, she lovingly describes the mutual bonds of affection and companionship between her and her dogs. Her writing is vital and direct, aware and poignant, and as well regarded today as when The House of All Sorts was first published in 1944 to critical and popular acclaim.
Reviews with the most likes.
Emily Carr seems to have liked animals much more than people, and this book is about how horrible people are and how wonderful dogs are. I first bought this book years ago because I enjoyed reading Klee Wyck for a class, and I probably would have liked this more had I read it back then. But I lean more toward compassion and understanding than I used to, so it was difficult to enjoy this.
However, her style of writing can be quite refreshing, and there were a couple of memorable passages:
“Poetical extravagance over ‘pearly dew and daybreak' does not ring true when that most infernal of inventions, the alarm clock, wrenches you from sleep, rips a startled heart from your middle and tosses it on to an angry tongue, to make ugly splutterings not complimentary to the new morning; down upon you spills cold shiveriness – a new day's responsibilities have come.”
“People in the house moved quietly. Human voices were tuned so low that the voices in inanimate things – shutting of doors, clicks of light switches, crackling of fires – swelled to importance. Clocks ticked off the solemn moments as loudly as their works would let them.”
