Very Good Butter

John Lavery, to judge from his debut collection of short stories Very Good Butter, obviously missed that creative writing class where the instructor counselled the students to write about what they know. Abandoning the autobiographical ... Read More »

February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Exhibitions: Tales of Sex in the City

By Michele Davidson, ed.

Exhibitions, an anthology of erotic short stories combining sex with travel, succeeds on certain levels but fails on others. The foreword, by Bust magazine editor Debbie Stoller, explains that sex is a type of journey ... Read More »

February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Rhymes with Useless

By Terence Young

Reading a collection of short stories from cover to cover is a little like tackling the collected works of a novelist all in a row: after a while the reader finds motifs and themes repeating ... Read More »

February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Marrow and Other Stories

By Nora Gold

It’s not surprising that a collection of short stories entitled Marrow (the kind found in bones) and containing a novella called Flesh would be preoccupied with the body. All the stories in Nora Gold’s debut ... Read More »

February 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ The Love of a Good Woman

By Alice Munro

Any new collection by Alice Munro is an eagerly awaited event, and despite the hype that the publishing industry is wont to practice, Munro is one of a few living writers who prove worthy of ... Read More »

February 20, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Sex Is Red

By Bill Gaston

In this age of short attention spans and quick fixes, the short story should be more popular than it is with readers. But short story collections seldom put a gleam in the eye of publishers ... Read More »

February 19, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Short

The Devil Out There

By Julie Keith

The connections between the linked stories of Julie Keith’s assured new collection at first seem tenuous, distracting even. Instead of responding to each tale on its own terms, we find ourselves, like small-town gossips, looking ... Read More »

February 19, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Island: The Collected Stories

By Alistair MacLeod

Fourteen of the 16 stories in Island have appeared in Alistair MacLeod’s two earlier short fiction collections. But it is the title story, one of the two new to book form, that epitomizes the theme ... Read More »

February 19, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Waifs and Strays

By Charles de Lint

Readers of Ottawa fantasy writer Charles de Lint are facing an embarrassment of riches this fall. Tor Books continues its ongoing trade paperback reissue campaign, which has brought back to print books that have been ... Read More »

February 18, 2004 | Filed under: Fiction: Short