chilly girl by rebecca rosenblum

rebecca rosenblum is a canadian author who attended mcgill and u of t for english and is famous for her short stories and here is a picture of her:

she is about 30 years old and published her collection of short stories once last year in november and she won a lot of awards and distinctions for it. in an interview she says that shes interested in writing stories about public places that really packs people together: she likes this because she was from the country and wide open spaces, she likes to see strangers and she likes public transit. she says about the title of her short story collection once that is it an answer to once-upon-a-time because her stories are grounded in a time and place and character but are still magical like in chilly girl. there is one fairy tale that i have adored more than any other since i was a little boy called the snow queen which has also to do with coldness which is interesting. i really like fairy tales because they are very warm things to read no matter the content.

i like to connect things i have read together and when i read the end of chilly girl i was very strongly reminded of a passage from something i had just finished a book called world’s fair by some dude called doctorow:

I found now if I held myself the nauseating ache was bearable. Then I pressed Meg’s head against myself. I knew everything now, the crucial secret, so carelessly vouchsafed. After all, I had not intended this, it had come to me without my bidding, without any planning or calculation on my part, presented, in fact, as an accident of the adventure. It was not my fault. I had worried before, all the time in this enormous effort to catch up to life, to find it, to feel it, comprehend it; but all I had to do was be in it and it would instruct me and give me everything I needed. As I fell asleep the fireworks went off over and over again like me pounding my own chest and sending my voice to the heavens that I was here.

i dont know why or how but there is some strange subconscious connection that i cannot explain.

the story starts off with the chilly girl as a rather timid character and sympathetic because of this. this timidity comes so naturally i wonder this could a chilly girl have been not-timid? i dont think so.

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