In the title story of this collection a child valiantly sells chocolate bars for her Grade 6 trip, only to learn it’s to the wrong theme park – she thought the teacher said Marineland, not Midland, Ontario. In place of glistening water, leaping dolphins, and cotton candy, there is only dust, grim perseverance, and a historical site. Her crushing disappointment seems to prefigure a lifetime of such letdowns – or maybe not. She won’t be fooled again, and she has a story to tell for the rest of her life.

This mix of absurdity, pain, and hope is what makes this collection so satisfying, and probably has something to do with Sabatini’s twice being shortlisted for the Journey Prize. In every story there are gritty kernels around which the narrative accrues: a visceral image, a haunting, whispered phrase.

As in Sabitini’s first collection, The One with the News, some stories are linked, here by the character of Connie. We meet her as a child steeling herself for her aunts to pierce her ears, trying to keep up with her brother, Will, and his older, tougher friends. By the book’s end, she is grown up with (like Sabatini) numerous children of her own. Mothering is a recurrent theme – failed mothering on account of widowhood, morbid obesity, or preoccupation with a good book; good-enough mothering by grace and good luck. Many stories are about a young girl’s dawning awareness of the explosive power of sex. The characters are original, flaring into life with a few telling details. Pain and insight are frequently juxtaposed.

Sabatini affirms the power of story – in the aunts’ gossip, in Grandma Iz’s eccentric Bible tales – in shaping a community. She piles on the small observations of life, the ironies, disappointments, and delights, while evoking a direct response in her reader. This is a writer to watch.