Mythologies of Outer Space
edited by Jim Ellis and Noreen Humble
University of Calgary Press (2025)

“The moon belongs to everyone – / the best things in life are free” 

The opening quote of this inspired anthology sets the tone for this gorgeous coffee table book. The first thing to note is the stellar production of the physical object itself. Stunning, high quality pages, with vibrant and eye catching visuals punctuate this wide ranging contemplation of the moon. People have been gazing upward at the moon in awe and reverence since eyes could see. In this particular chapter of reverence, Dr. Jim Ellis notes, the moon “remains an astonishingly fruitful (and revealing) site for human fantasy and exploration. . . originating in the forty-second annual Community seminar for the Calgary Institute for the Humanities.” He further notes, “the contributions that follow will explore how different cultures have regarded space and celestial bodies, and how space has been imagined in art and literature.”

Multi-genre texts by a variety of experts and pontificators illuminate mythologies, science, ontologies, poems, and contemplations. In the first chapter, Alice Gorman, space archaeologist, ruminates on the ways the moon lives, as god, goddess, or man, while also reflecting on the ways the moon is mapped as a geography, or dead planet to be investigated, mined, and colonized as territory. 

The idea that the moon is both living and dead fascinated my imagination, as a sort of Schrödinger’s moon. Gorman pushed me to think about new ways the moon can be considered, even after centuries of contemplation! 

Noreen Humble’s essay on “Imaginary voyages to the moon: Lucian and his legacy” furthered ways in which the moon is the source of endless travel narratives. “Journey to the moon”, “the moon as halfway house during the life cycle of souls,” and, of course “Melies rocket into the moon’s right eye.” Humble illustrates the infinite capacity of human imagination to reach the destination, and such a wide array of vehicles and animal servants to get there, that once again, I was struck by the sheer breadth of commentary within. The moon is a planet and perhaps the greatest canvas for imagining. Both present and unattainable, it breeds story, hope, vibrancy, and acts as the greatest mirror to human civilization. 

Dr. Hilding Nelson, an astrophysicist works on intersections of indigenous ways of knowing and traditional western science, dives into ways that the moon is part of the eco-system of the Land, colonialism. He tells the names of indigenous stars that are ever present, “Chickadee”, and Binary stars, while illustrating knowledge, and discussing the erasure of more ancient knowledge than western based textbooks contain. 

Further works press into biology, science, science fiction, speculative fiction, poetry, habitation, and contemplations about outer and inner space. 

At the book’s conclusion, astronaut Robert Thirsk, discusses exploration, space debris, and commercialism in space, debris, and rules that are seemingly unenforceable. There’s deep concern about stewardship. He says, “I am frustrated by misguided decision makes, and some aspects of space governance, but I have many kindred spirits who are determined to explore space safely and sustainably, and with equity and peaceful intention.” He finishes with exploration of the final frontier is too important to get wrong.”

Mythologies of Outer Space is an eclectic and wide ranging exploration, and the ways in which humanity has a relationship with space. This beautiful book will stretch your imagination and knowledge of our common friend, the moon. 

Dr. Micheline Maylor is a Poet Laureate emerita of Calgary (2016-18). She was awarded the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Award for literary contributions to Alberta in 2022. She is the senior acquisitions editor (poetry) at Frontenac House Press. She is a Walrus talker, a TEDX talker, and she a past Calgary Public Library Author in Residence (2016). Her most recent book is The Bad Wife (U of A Press 2021) won the BPAA Robert Kroetsch Award for best book of Alberta poetry and has been translated into Italian La Cattiva Moglie (iQdB).Her latest essay introduces Hunger: The Poems of Susan Musgrave (Wilfred Laurier Press. 2025).

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By Kathryn MacDonald

The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow
by Armand Garnet Ruffo
Nishannbemwin translations by Brian D. McInnes
Wolsak & Wynn Publishers (2024)

Here is a story that does not end, but continues today in those who believe in a country where justice will prevail, as new generations rise up to fill the footsteps of warriors who have fallen long ago, whose sacrifices and legacies we continue to remember and honour….
(133)

Armand Garnet Ruffo has published poetry and prose, made films, and created anthologies in addition to his academic credentials. The various skills required for these successes come together in The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, creating a literature that is extraordinary.

The Dialogues breaks the boundaries of what we think of as poetry. In poetry, we expect “density of meaning, felicity of language, authenticity of feeling.” It should also “deliver to us…the sense of urgency,” and Ruffo gives us all this and more. We don’t expect the weaving of documentation through the book-length poem, but here it is, smoothly echoing the poetic voice of Pegahmagabow and that of the poet-narrator who occasionally intervenes. And as suggested by the title, this overlays the idea of musical performance. The demands of staying true to an historical life, while working within the constraints of the musical, has resulted in the unique the structure of The Dialogues.

The poetry, as we’re accustomed to think of it, is on the lefthand page. On the facing page are facts substantiating the poetics: sometimes it is in the form of the poet’s memory; sometimes in the form of a government or military document; sometimes a background statement as is “An Interlude to Discuss Francis’s Encounter” (35). As well, this collection weaves an actual musical score from the production that inspired this book (21). 

The Dialogues is innovative in its narrative and story-telling, not only in its voice and in its structure but also in its immense impact. Reading it, I thought of Omeros by Derek Walcott. Ruffo’s scaffolding may not be created on a myth, but The Dialogues is mythic. Francis Pegahmagabow is a hero: in his soldiering; in his life after the Great War; and in his legacy. The Dialogues takes us on a time-journey, a culture-journey, a life-journey, from which I came away bruised but better understanding a life, a time, and a People in a “felt” way beyond intellectual knowledge alone. 

Another poet who roamed about in my mind as I read The Dialogues is N. Scott Momaday, a man who led the Native American literary renaissance (c.1968). His illustrated The Way to Rainy Mountain – a prose poem, an homage – took me inside Kiowa culture in a deep and embracing way. We exit each of these books with a story in our hearts and held by something beyond words. This is what Ruffo does for the Anishinaabe of Perry Island, Georgian Bay. He shows us a man at the turn of the twentieth century, a “modern man living in two worlds” (31). Ruffo takes us far into the depth of Pegahmagabow’s culture and lived brutality, as well as into the inheritance of his People. Beyond that, Ruffo takes us toward healing and celebration.

There are two pivotal spiritual moments in Francis Pegahmagabow’s story. The first happens when Pegahmagabow (say Peg-ah-ma-ga-bow) encounters his Deer Spirit (22), the second, when he meets an “old Medicine Man” who gifts him a medicine bag – empowering, poignant experiences that change Pegahmagabow (34). They establish Pegahmagabow’s deep spirituality. They echo through The Dialogues.

In the second section, Pegahmagabow lives through the trenches of WWI. He tells us, “We ran straight into the storm / of machine gun bullets.” He tells us of “Boy’s, spilling out their guts, / calling for their mothers” (50). Should we have any doubt about the reality, the narrator tells us that “The average life / in the trenches / is six months. // He’s been dug in / for nearly four years” (62). It’s a gruelling time. He draws on his faith, and proves himself over and over again.

the enemy turns to a new killing tool: chlorine gas.
And the Canadians are without masks.

…

The first attack creates havoc
General Edwin Alderson is desperate

He approaches Francis Pegahmagabow
who is crouched at the edge of the trench
oiling the breech mechanism of his Ross rifle.

…

Is it true you can change the wind’s direction?
(8-14)

In the third section the decorated soldier-hero returns home, lost and bewildered to face racism and poverty. The Deer Spirit, who has lent his strength to Pegahmagabow, entreats:

Let us mourn
for the ones who died
were resurrected
and returned
abandoned
and forgotten
in a country
they no longer recognized.
(66)

Francis is broken:

Equality
in the trenches in a time of need,
but now I’m back at the end of the line
with barely enough to feed my family.
(74)

We are reminded of

A time when everything Indian
is banned and shunned,
his people are subject to the whim
of the Indian department
(76)

The Indian Agent repeats a recurring line:

I’ll see what I can do. Time’s up, I’ll get back to you.
(78)

In 1946, there were protests. I learned that Francis Pegahmagabow “attended a secret meeting in Biscotasing, northern Ontario, after returning from “the first parliament of the National Indian Government in Detroit” (83). 

For a while, Pegahmagabow was chief of his people,

Then it is over.
Francis is voted out of office.
He joins the peacetime militia
and feels the old camaraderie again,
his medals pinned to his chest.
(84)

The final section, takes us into the performance. By now, we can imagine the stage, the musicians, the readers in an arc, hear them, and listen.

In the afterward, Ruffo tells us that he was “initially hesitant” to accept the invitation to write the libretto for a musical to celebrate the life of Ojibwe-Anishnaabe WWI sniper Francis Pegahmagabow. He also says that he became convinced by Larry Beckwith’s rationale that “Truth and reconciliation was central to the project, and in that light having a non-Indigenous classical composer and an Indigenous poet-storyteller made sense.” Ruffo “signed on.” We – the lucky ones who have seen the performance and those of us who read the book – are the beneficiaries of this result: The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow.

I’m hoping you’re wowed with the woven complexity, the direct dialogue, the writing between the lines that Ruffo has given us. The Dialogues is a spiritual and earthy story of one man and his culture in a time of local and global upheaval. It is an adventure story, a hero’s story, a sad, yet hopeful story. I recommend it to you without reservation.

Kathryn MacDonald is the author of Far Side of the Shadow Moon and A Breeze You Whisper. Learn more about her work at kathrynmacdonald.com

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Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand
by Tim Bowling
Freehand Books (2025)

Established poet and novelist Tim Bowling’s newest book is a collection of short stories titled Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand. The title is evocative of the collection’s themes of both the drudgery and whimsy of everyday life. Bowling’s years of experience as a writer show in his deft ability to capture deep emotions roiling under the surface of seemingly mundane events, from a little league baseball game to a trip to the bookstore. Each of the stories in this collection offer up a bite-sized look into the lives of characters who seem to be nothing special – they are librarians, sessional lecturers, fishermen, college students, and baristas–but who contain deep wells of trauma, grief, despair, hope, and joy. Recurring themes in the collection include grief, secrecy, the reopening of old wounds, and the impact of traumatic events on individuals and those close to them.

In “This is a Test of the Emergency Book-Buying System,” we are introduced to a narrator doing what seems like a perfunctory task: checking local bookstores for a particular book he wants to buy. We follow the narrator navigate multiple bookstores (and multiple unhelpful booksellers) and a bitter cold prairie winter day, and slowly learn about a recent tragedy and how finding a particular book is wound up with his grief. Bowling keeps the emotional turmoil subtly below the surface in this story, eventually bubbling over in an image that is both comedic and exultant, when a young bookseller named Skyler rides an elevator away from the narrator, who describes the image as “almost glorious, like a Renaissance painting. The Ascension of Skyler into Children’s Books and Merchandise.” (108). This story is an excellent example of Bowling’s tendency to take a small, seemingly unimportant moment and imbue it with emotional weight.

As often as Bowling delivers stirring emotional moments, he also imbues the collection with humour and playfulness. One example of this is in the story “Bartleby, the Sessional,” where a sessional lecturer, Jerris Johns, who has long been struggling to get ahead in the world of academia, simply gives up and takes up attitude of preferring not to do things in an homage to Herman Melville’s classic story “Bartleby, the Sessional.” It begins with a snowstorm causing Jerris to cancel one class, resulting in a snowball effect of cancelling class after class. Jerris justifies it by stating “the inevitable future of lecturing would be virtual anyway, so why not get a head start and even go one step further by not lecturing, period?” (56). Eventually, Jerris is called into a meeting with the chair of the department and, expecting to be fired, is instead given accolades for his pedagogical excellence.

Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand is a compelling exploration of the mundanity of life in all its complexities, seen through a lens of diverse characters with varied emotional scars, biases, and desires. 

Rosalie Morris is a writer and editor based in British Columbia. Her work can be found in The Malahat Review, Room Magazine, The Fiddlehead, PRISM, Indie Is Not A Genre, and various dark corners of the internet.

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Rag Pickers
by Blaine Newton
University of Calgary Press (2025)

Thomas Trofimuk’s blurb offered me a guiding question on this review of Ragpickers: “I found myself re-reading these stunningly clever, and heartbreaking, and poignant stories and asking myself ‘How the hell did he do that?’”

I can offer some answers.

One might expect an accomplished playwright like Blaine Newton to create an exciting cross-genre experiment. His creation of deep characters, fine staging, stop motions in scene, detailing and sensory elements all form a part of his debut short story collection. Narrational rumination is a solid undercurrent, “Nouns are the first casualties –“, (45) and here begins the litany of loss within the stories. Even so, we visualize and retain.  A witty dialogue between tense lovers: 

She puts the gum on the end of her index finger and with a slow exaggerated gesture presses it onto the tip of her nose like a pink, masticated clown nose.

‘Stop it.’

‘Don’t you want me to look pretty?’ She twirls twice, her hands skyward, her hips swaying with each revolution.  (61)

The dialogues move us to touch lines that change characters. This is an onerous and meticulous craft that Newton manages like a boss.  

Settings become shadow characters; those that shroud Ben, who plants treasure for children in an average neighbourhood become extraordinary by the gifts he buries.  

And through the yard wound a path. It was made of bricks made in a herringbone pattern – old bricks of a colour and type you don’t see anymore. His work took him to sites that were to be demolished to make way for change. He must have salvaged as many as he could carry back to his truck, placing them down on the rough soil, nurturing moss to fill the cracks between them. (114)    

You can just feel the ground; the setting that nurtures the character and makes a map.  Perhaps we can RagPick wit from setting sometimes, but Newton has a gift for it:

His office was clutter. Bookshelves lined two walls, from floor to ceiling, holding books that stood from all possible angles of equilibrium. More books were stacked on the floor, like African anthills or a literary Stonehenge, as though the light through the wood slat blinds would eventually align with the volumes to reveal a fundamental truth or at least the correct time. (133)

In the story One on One, you see and enter fully the mystery of a boy and a narrator: a particular twist of first-person point of view and omniscience. This presents as a starling scene of magic realism that permeates the story and calls us back to the rags of memory. They are bright, and they are salvaged. 

The Cantos as story, are a gift. Observe: “The poets continued, including a sound poet who seemed to be suggesting that the core meaning of life could be interpreted in a vowelsome resonance reminiscent of a flatulent smoke alarm.“ (123) Newton’s wit overtures to the brilliant continent of short story.  

And that, folks, is how he does it.

Vivian Hansen’s publications include three full-length books of poetry and several chapbooks. She has published essays in Coming Here, Being Here, and in Waiting. She also has a short piece in the Calgary Public Library Dispenser Series (2019) “Where We Surfaced.”

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Beth Everest’s new collection of short fiction about Jasper comes in the wake of the wildfires that swept through the town in 2024. Published as a fundraiser, all proceeds will be donated to help those affected by the fires. 

In these 15 stories, we enter 1950’s Jasper as though we are returning home from a hike, with World War II still in the rearview mirror. Such nostalgic authenticity is achieved through sprinkling in some of the facts to establish setting. For example, in “Free to Drive,” we learn about the Lovats, an elite unit of Scottish soldiers who trained near Jasper during the war. In “Spit and Shine,” the narrator delivers a local newspaper, The Totem, on the morning paper route. And in more than one story, characters reference the iconic Sears catalogue, which was so emblematic of small-town life in Canada.

Truly, the down-to-earth realism of the setting and Everest’s incredible imagery made the stories wildly immersive. In “Ivy,” I felt I was right beside the park warden, observing the “sloping green meadow with paintbrushes [and]… tiger lilies and lady slippers” (24) while smelling the “wolf willow, sweet and sage” (24). And during the hike in “Free to Drive,” I could hear “the hollow echo of a loon” (60) and “chickadees singing their thing” (61). 

Along with mesmerizing imagery, Everest’s writing is marked by expert characterization. Some characters weave in and out of the stories, becoming more complex with every appearance. Girty Brown is one such character. Each time I met Girty, her unpleasant nature was revealed, little by little. In “Bonds,” during skiing lessons, Girty doesn’t care that her friend Marjorie gets seriously injured, saying: “that old biddy… I can’t stand her” (22). After Marjorie leaves to get medical care, Girty insists that everyone simply “get on with the lesson” (22), proving herself to be severely lacking empathy. Later, in “Hanging Out to Dry,” we encounter Girty again when Owen—an introverted man—asks to borrow her car. She agrees to loan it, then “pats him on the leg and leaves her hand on his knee” (94). The moment deeply disturbs Owen, and from then on, I couldn’t help but give Girty my own nick-name—dirty Girty.  

Other characters are featured in only one story, but the crafting of character remains impeccable. For example, in “Call Girls” we meet two young women whose girlishness is established immediately. The duo meets while waitressing at the Cantonese restaurant, frequently getting in trouble for “giggling like mad” (34). Further, the narrator revels in wordplay, taking child-like delight in stacking rhymes with her boyfriend’s name. She calls him “Handy Andy Pandy” (33) because he’s cute and strong like a panda bear and good at fixing things up. The stream-of-thought narration style also enhanced characterization and highlighted the immaturity of the women. To illustrate, the narrator says her roommate, the call girl, “knows everything about everyone and tells me it all, but it’s confidential” (35). I was entranced by this silly duo, and the tension between the naïve girls and the somber situations they find themselves in was enthralling. 

Furthermore, the conflicts and actions of the characters throughout the stories were always engaging. I imagined myself right there with them—getting robbed at gunpoint, driving down a dirt road at midnight in the middle of a snowstorm, pushing a rude neighbour right off his porch, getting struck by lightning on a roller-coaster, and even getting chased by a bear. 

In fact, bears are an ever-present threat throughout the collection. Real or imagined, bears are there, reminding the characters that if human law doesn’t get them, natural law will. This is the case for Bill in “Free to Drive,” who wakes from a nap to a grizzly attack. It chases him up a tree, mauling his prosthetic leg with “paws … bigger than platters. Claws digging [in]” (63). The grizzly punishes Bill for lying to the people of Jasper and allowing everyone to think he’s sailor or soldier, losing his leg heroically at war or sea, when he really lost his leg by driving drunk and getting into a car wreck that also killed his friends. Further, in “Spit and Shine” a “massive white bear [appears] in the middle of the road” (71), judging the narrator for illegally ice-fishing. 

Prominent themes of dreams, illusions, and lies united this collection. In “Spit and Shine,” Freddie dreams of “margaritas and girls on a hot white beach” (67). In fact, he’ll do “anything to feed the dream” (70), even poach fish for some extra money to travel to Mexico. And the narrator, Freddie’s partner-in-crime, can’t trust his own eyes when he sees the white bear, saying “it couldn’t have been a bear out there in the winter, but it is so surreal that … [I] coulda believed anything” (71). And in “Small Town Girl,” the narrator shares her boyfriend’s dream of getting “loads of money and … [going] to Vegas” (107), and I felt her pain when that dream dies, when she realizes that her boyfriend abandoned her, that “he’s on his way somewhere else—Vegas maybe” (112). And in “Cold Turkey” a mother lies to her daughter about quitting smoking despite getting caught red-handed, holding a “lighted cigarette” (97). Truly, the interplay of truth, lies, illusions, ambiguity, and dreams within the collection made for rich reading.

When it comes to crafting narrative, Everest has mastered the art of opening and closing a story. The collection itself is treated as a complete narrative that begins and ends in doorways. The book begins with many doors opening in “Paper Route” as the narrator goes door-to-door selling tadpoles, and it ends with a fed-up mother letting the “screen door bang” (116) shut in “Ground Beef.” 

Story after story, the endings expanded the narrative. To illustrate, in “Call Girls,” the narrator believes bad things happen in threes. But when the story ends, only two bad things happen, leaving her with a heightening anxiety, asking: “what’s going to happen next? What is the third thing? What? What is going to happen?” (39). Endings like this don’t end the story, just pull the blinds back down over the window we were looking through. We know there’s more. We know there’s a third event. We know the story isn’t over.  

This, I believe, is the core of the collection. At the heart of Everest’s fiction, there’s faith that as stories are told and re-told, they become more true, more real, more open. A belief that no matter what, the story goes on—that Jasper goes on and on.  

Megan Nega is poet, writer, and artist from Calgary, Alberta. Her poetry has appeared in the literary magazines FreeFall and New Forum. In her spare time, Megan enjoys visiting the mountains in search of wildflowers, watercolour painting, and sharing her thoughts about all things writerly and literary on her blog, Writer’s Hearth.

The post Review of Beth Everest’s “Some of the Facts” appeared first on FreeFall Magazine.

By Jonathan Greenbaum

Blue Runaways: Stories
by Jann Everard
Stonehewer Books (2024)

Those of us who read the CanLit magazines know that emerging writers abound in the pages of these journals. So, when after years of effort one of these writers emerges into the pages of her first book—it’s a wonderful event. In the case of “Blue Runaways,” Jann Everard’s first short fiction collection, she gifts us with twelve finely crafted stories.

Born in Halifax, Everard lived in Toronto for many years, writing fiction and working in the health administration field. Her short fiction has appeared in literary journals in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Recently, Everard and her husband relocated to Vancouver Island.

The stories in “Blue Runaways” take place in diverse settings: in Iceland, in Bali, in our Canadian cities, and in rural locales. I detect two overarching themes in the collection. First, there are women struggling to overcome various limitations and sadness in their lives. For example, the female protagonist in “An Imitation of Grace,” Gwen, travels to Bali with her four year old son, Ollie. Far away from Canada, Gwen meditates on the recent loss of her partner: She knew that the loss of Rupert should have made her cling to her child, knew that Ollie needed her time and attention…But guilt wasn’t enough to want to make her want to be his mother. Her baby held no charm.

The second theme turns on how Nature impacts and shapes the lives of Everard’s protagonists, as in Paige’s efforts to free a young Orca whale trapped on rocks in the story, “Transient.” Nature, Everard suggests here, can be cruel to animals and humans.

In “Blue Runaways,” the collection’s title story, the 24 year old female narrator travels from Canada to an artist’s colony in Iceland. The young woman has recently had one of her arms surgically removed. Her parents have paid for her trip to get her out of their hair. I’m not an artist of any kind, the unnamed narrator tells Liv, the Icelandic woman who runs the retreat. I’m a lost soul, a person searching for a purpose in life—according to my mom. What happens to the narrator in Iceland is both surprising and moving.

My favourite story in the collection is “Through the Sidelights.” Meg, the central character in the story, has taken to visiting Joe, a man she’s known for more than thirty years. Meg lives with her partner, David—but Joe has recently lost his partner, Rachel, Meg’s close friend. Meg suddenly finds herself going through an existential crisis. And for several years now—since before Rachel’s illness—Meg had felt as if she’d lost her sense of purpose, was merely notching up days that were safe and routine. If she were to die tomorrow, she wondered, would a reputation for reliability and loyalty be legacy enough? Would she feel as if she’d truly lived?

Meg has a sexual flirtation with Joe. But later in the story as Meg stands outside Joe’s front door, she makes a painful discovery. She peeked through the sidelights by the front door. There he was. With someone else. Someone dancing in Rachel’s robe. Someone young. So young it might have been Carly (Meg’s own daughter).

Everard’s writing is tight, clear, and often beautiful. These polished stories do not read like those in a typical first collection. They women in the stories grasp at life in whatever ways they can.

Jonathan Greenbaum is an Ontario high school English teacher. He has a Masters in Education from the University of Toronto, and is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers in Toronto. His short fiction has appeared in The Nashwaak Review.

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The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Been and Known
by Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Nimbus Publishing (2024)

Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s new book is a beautiful and thought-provoking collection of creative nonfiction that captures moments, fragments, and images gleaned from her life and experiences. Over a hundred short pieces are divided here into five thematic sections, and the collection’s lyric and nonlinear flow suggests the shape of memory and recollection. The phases of life, like the phases of the moon, are seen to flow almost imperceptibly into each other and yet with the wisdom of perspective, are seen as distinct from one another. The body, family, friends, the constructs that make up our society, aging, sexuality, our interconnectedness and our connection to land and nature are among the many topics the author explores here, with an eagle eye and a poet’s ear.

The Old Moon in Her Arms is a memoir of being a daughter, wife, lover, mother; a memoir of the different experiences and the shifting realities of the different selves that make up a life. Neilsen Glenn explores transitions, from one life stage to another, or to the end of life. From “Moments of Glad Grace”:

A bright yellow bird appeared on the deck yesterday, stunned from the impact of a crash against glass, ending its spring busyness. I picked up its cooling body, felt the miracle of its soft intricacies, whispered a blessing before placing the body under a budding bush near the shore.

Readers are sure to hear many echoes of their own lives here. Pre-GPS / cell phone readers will appreciate “Drive South” which begins:

Although he loved cars, highway travel flummoxed my father. Road trips in my childhood always ended in wrong turns and bad decisions; he’d infuriate my mother, then drive in icy silence.

The author’s experience with a brain MRI, ordered after struggling with strange and disturbing symptoms, is explored in “You Did Well”:

You good? That too tight?

Nope, I say. My skull is cradled in a plastic cage against my ears. I insert the ear plugs, and pads clamp on my head…I attend closely, suspend judgement, and stop thinking about the next second or the next minute.

There is also humour here. One topic Neilsen Glenn addresses at different points is that of life in an aging body. In “Lookin’ Back”, she writes:

Decades on, she notices she isn’t noticed; she could be a rock or a stump, no one looks back to see if she is looking back to see…She strides past the coffee shop, a fugitive from fuckability.

The Old Moon in Her Arms is a gorgeous book that can be savoured all of a piece or dipped into at different times for the pleasure a few short reads at a time. Either way, the reader will appreciate the observations and memories Neilsen Glenn shares with us in this unique and kaleidoscopic collection.

Lori Hahnel is the author of the following books: Vermin (a short story collection), After You’ve Gone (a novel), Nothing Sacred (a short story collection), which was shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Award for fiction and Love Minus Zero (a novel). Her work has appeared in over forty journals in North America, Australia and the United Kingdom. She holds a BA in English from the University of Calgary. Hahnel lives in Calgary where she teaches creative writing.

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Lori Hahnel

A Way to be Happy: Stories
by Caroline Adderson
Biblioasis (2024)

The title of Caroline Adderson’s latest story collection derives from its epigraph, a passage from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. As Chekov’s characters search for a way to be happy, so too do Adderson’s, in often surprising and sometimes roundabout ways, much the same as in real life. Her confident, capable, clever prose sweeps the reader through the stories with remarkable ease, and her deft rendering of complicated characters is impressive.

In “All Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone”, a contemporary New Year’s Eve twist on O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi”, two homeless addicts drift uninvited from fancy party to fancy party, on a quest to finance their own rehab. Two unsuspecting guests make small talk with the pair on an elevator:

“I love your shoes,” Michelle said. “Are they Fluevogs?”

The elevator pinged and opened. Raj stepped out first. “See, I would find that an inappropriate question. What if she got them at Walmart?”

Michelle shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“What if I stole them?” she said, and they all laughed.

Ketman, the vaguely unlikeable protagonist of  “The Procedure”, struggles with the profound grief he feels at the death of his mother, while increasingly avoiding meaningful contact with the actual living people in his life. His upcoming common medical procedure provides him with the means to completely close off the outer world, at least temporarily, and gives new meaning to the term ‘inner journey’.

The hilarious and often poignant “Obscure Objects” gives the reader a first-hand look at the world of a group of teachers / writers. The all-too-familiar carefully monitored supply cupboard and cantankerous and temperamental department photocopier make their appearances. Adderson’s metafictional touches here are a delight:

I never called myself a writer or really thought of myself as one yet. I certainly never imagined that one day I too would pull out of my hat that scabied, half-dead rabbit, the writer-protagonist.

Ultimately the story develops from wry observations on the teaching life into the touching chronicle of a friendship with all too short a lease.

Closing out the collection is “From the Archives of the Hospital for the Insane”. While this historical story is the longest in the book, verging on novella length, the moving and tragic tale of Margaret C. (#1506) is captivating and thought-provoking, and the wealth of historical detail makes this story a standout.

The eight stories in A Way to Be Happy cover a wide range of situations, characters and settings, from contemporary to mid-nineteenth century. Adderson’s complex characters struggle, each in their own fashion, and each of them are rendered with humour, and sharply observed detail. As the author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, the breadth of Adderson’s writing experience is evident in her craft. This clever and meticulously crafted collection from a writer who has mastered her art is a pleasure to read.

Lori Hahnel is the author of After You’ve Gone (a novel), Nothing Sacred (a short story collection), which was shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Award for fiction and Love Minus Zero (a novel). Her work has appeared in over forty journals in North America, Australia and the United Kingdom. She holds a BA in English from the University of Calgary. Hahnel lives in Calgary where she teaches creative writing.

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This is How You Start to Disappear
by Astrid Blodgett
University of Alberta Press (2023)

Short story writer Astrid Blodgett explores loss, family dynamics, and uncomfortable truths with her latest collection, This Is How You Start To Disappear. Twelve short stories introduce readers to characters who experience different forms of trauma. Some stories come to a clear conclusion while others leave behind unanswered questions, often mirroring the reader’s life.

This Is How You Start To Disappear is distinctly Albertan, written against various backdrops in a way that conveys the author’s love for this often misunderstood province. In the opening story, These People Have Nothing, the narrator recalls believing that their rural neighbours were rich due to their expansive land, fields, and an array of animals held on their farm above the Pembina River. It was not their material possessions that gave the illusion of wealth, but the beautiful land on which they resided. In How to Read Water, the Athabasca River and its surrounding forest are the setting of both serenity and irritation for teenage Cat, whose annoyance at her father’s tales of nearby Disaster Point seems to inspire horrible karmic punishment when the nature she once loved lashes out against her family.

This Is How You Start To Disappear is prominently marketed as a collection about grief,
but its most resonant stories deal with themes of womanhood and matriarchy. These People Have Nothing is a prime example of these themes at their finest, introducing the reader to a woman who has been reunited with her brother following the death of their father. She recalls childhood memories at their family cabin in the months leading up to their parent’s divorce, which she pinpoints to the death of her father’s dog. The dog had been hit by a car, and her father sought help from a neighbour to put it down. While the narrator knows the dog was shot, she can’t remember if her dad was the one who ultimately did it. In the end, it is her brother who reminds her that her mother was the one burdened with putting down the dog. Blodgett poignantly summarizes the complexity and burden of the matriarch in the following lines:

And after, she must have held [the gun] out to him, the way she held out the mushrooms, imploring him to see her, to see her great kindness. Doing for him what he couldn’t do. Look what I’ve done, her eyes must have said. Look what I’ve done for you. Now it’s your turn.

And how is this strength rewarded? Her daughter misremembering the incident to the credit of
her father, and her son believing, as his dad had said at the time, that the dog could have survived his injuries had he not been put down.

Stories such as Everything’s Fine, Actually and When Sleep Is Easy deal with the uglier aspects of motherhood, like the guilt that can accompany post-partum, and a lifetime being overlooked to the point of bitter resentment. Meanwhile, This Will All Be Over Soon, How to Read Water, and The Night the Moon Was Bright and We Ate Pigs and Brownies and Drank Fizzy Beer and Didn’t Remember Much at All, in the End, delve into the intricacies of girlhood, exploring themes of sisterhood, caretaking, and being taken advantage of in ways you don’t yet understand.

For any reader grappling with complicated feelings towards family, This Is How You Start To Disappear is a hand to hold. Blodgett writes with an impeccable eye for details that are typically noticed and remembered by children, and the stories narrated by adults pack a punch even in their mundane moments.

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