“Crone lit” stories that are examples of the wisdom and insights of older women and at the same time tributes to the classic literature that inspired them.
“There are things that it is impossible to learn when you are young, no matter how much you read and study.” The season of fury and wonder, in Sharon Butala’s world, is the old age of women. These stories present the lives of old women – women of experience, who’ve seen much of life, who’ve tasted of its sweetness and its bitter possibilities, and have developed opinions and come to conclusions about what it all amounts to. These are stories of today’s old women, who understand that they have been created by their pasts.
But there’s another layer to this standard-setting example of “cronelit.” Not content to rest on her considerable literary laurels, Sharon Butala continues to push the boundaries of her art. The stories in Season of Fury and Wonder are all reactions to other, classic, works of literature that she has encountered and admired. These stories are, in their various ways, inspired by, and tributes to, works by the likes of Raymond Carver, Willa Cather, James Joyce, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Conner, John Cheever, Alan Sillitoe, Ernest Hemmingway, Tim O’Brien, Edgar Allan Poe, and Anton Checkov.
Sharon Butala is the award-winning and bestselling author of nineteen books of fiction and nonfiction, numerous essays and articles, poetry, and five produced plays. Her classic book The Perfection of the Morning was a number one bestseller and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Her first-ever story collection, Queen of the Headaches, published by Coteau Books, was also a finalist for a Governor Gerneral’s Award. Her novel Wild Rose, also with Coteau, was shortlisted for the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.
Butala is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award, the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and the 2012 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. In 2002 she became an Officer of the Order of Canada. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, she lived most of her life in that province, and now resides in Calgary, Alberta.
