About Claire Holden Rothman: Claire Holden Rothman is a Canadian novelist, short story writer and translator. She has published two novels and two short story collections.
Happiness is a strange thing. It is something I tend to recognize only after it has passed, when I realize I miss it.
It was the seventh of November, 1918. The war was finally over. Maybe it would be declared a holiday and named War's End Day or something equally hopeful and wrong. Wars would break out again. Violence was part of human nature as much as love and gen...
I looked briefly up from my notes. I was surrounded by hearts, sectioned and preserved. Hearts with holes. Hearts with leaking valves or thickened walls. Hearts with narrow or transposed aortas. I closed my eyes.