Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart

As mentioned in my Canada haul post, I chose Ordinary Wonder Tales (2022) by Emily Urquhart after looking through all the books in a bookshop that had ‘Canadian author’ or ‘Canadian press’ slips in the top of them. This one turned out to be both, published by Biblioasis which, like Emily Urquhart, is based in Ontatio. Well, I’m so glad I picked out Ordinary Wonder Tales – I thought it was a fantastic book, and exactly the sort of thing I love: an essay collection that skilfully combines personal memoir with the author’s particular expertise. In this case, that is folklore – Urquhart has a doctorate in folklore, and a wide-ranging knowledge of examples from around the world. Better still, she is excellent at explaining them in an accessible way, filled with curiosity. In each essay, Urquhart takes incidents from her own life, and the contemporary world more broadly, and intertwines it with folklore from the centuries. It is such a brilliant idea for giving depth and intrigue to stories…