Ik denk dat we de wereld zo ervaren. De hele dag door worden we overvallen door beelden, door herinneringen. Mijn eigen geheugen is niet gekoppeld aan tijd. Ik heb geen idee wanneer iets gebeurd is, maar ik weet nog wel precies hoe een stof voelde en welke kleuren die had. Ik denk op die manier, ik ervaar het zo, dus ik zou het moeilijk vinden niet op die manier te schrijven. In een opschrijfboekje schrijf ik de hele dag door hoe mensen bewegen, hoe het licht binnenvalt. Die observaties kunnen doorsijpelen in mijn romans. Soms kan ik euforisch beschrijven hoe iemand een vork opraapt, een andere keer beschrijf ik zeven keer dezelfde fruitschaal omdat ik het gevoel het dat ik het nog niet goed heb. Zoals iemand anders tekent of schildert. Ik wil in zo weinig mogelijk woorden iets beschrijven dat de lezer onmiddellijk herkent. Dat is voor mij de essentie van schrijven.’

The novel's only real weakness is that this symbolic richness doesn't extend into the lives of its second-tier characters; Helen's three daughters, in particular, are only lightly sketched...The novel's ending, too, in which Helen finally slips the knot of her grief, seems suspiciously neat from afar. But these faults can be forgiven in the context of what Moore manages to pull off: a novel which takes a moment of catastrophe and focuses not on the moment itself but on all the moments that surround it; that are altered, subtly or dramatically, by it.

February is not plot-driven: the back-and-forth chronology is meant to flesh out emotional landscapes and fill in historical details. Although Moore writes with an almost brash economy, she cannot prevent February from coming off as an overly sentimental love story....Cal was the great and only love of Helen’s life, and she spends the 25 years after his death rather tediously reliving their time together and speculating about his final moments....would have worked as a short story – a genre at which Moore excels – but its impact is ultimately diluted by the novel’s amplitude.

Is Lisa Moore a Buddhist? The tragic subject matter of her latest novel fits...I must pause here to confess that I usually find this kind of writing irritating. Novels constructed of luminous images make me feel like a dump truck is slowly tipping a load of rose petals over me. Where's the narrative? Like these other novels, February disregards conventional plot. Its present-time story line is minimal...Moore offers us, elegantly, exultantly, the very consciousness of her characters. In this way, she does more than make us feel for them. She makes us feel what they feel, which is, I think, the point of literature and maybe even the point of being human. For these 308 pages, I was Helen, grief-struck and in love with my husband, furious with him.

With February, she has created an incredibly empathetic character in Helen, whose protective shell is always on the brink of cracking, even if her words and actions belie her vulnerability.
There’s an economy in Moore’s style that shows us how a once vibrant life can be whittled down by pain and loneliness. But, by grounding her writing in the physical world, Moore shows how life’s everyday tasks and encounters create a comforting continuity that allows forward movement.