Psychology and Other Stories

There is no story called “Psychology” in C.P. Boyko’s second collection. Instead, Boyko’s stories boldly assert that the practice of psychology – along with its cousins, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and self-help – is a type of ... Read More »

October 22, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ Dear Life

By Alice Munro

Critics have been saying for so long that a typical Alice Munro story is as rich and textured as any novel that they seem not to have noticed that her recent stories don’t resemble novels ... Read More »

October 15, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ Siege 13

By Tamas Dobozy

When Soviet forces laid siege to the Nazi-controlled city of Budapest in late December 1944, it marked the beginning of one of the most brutal stretches of the Second World War. By the time the ... Read More »

October 9, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

The Iron Bridge

By Anton Piatigorsky

At a secret meeting in a Georgian seminary, teenaged students discuss forbidden secular texts away from the strict watch of the Russian priests. Among the teenagers is “Soso” Djugashvili, a smaller than average, pockmarked, half-crippled ... Read More »

September 11, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ Sleeping Funny

By Miranda Hill

Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole and arriving in a strange and exotic land, reading one of Miranda Hill’s stories is to be delivered to an almost dreamlike place where familiar themes in fiction ... Read More »

September 10, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Valery the Great

By Elaine McCluskey

In her second collection of short stories, Elaine McCluskey has concocted a ragtag chorus of sometimes funny, often sad characters. The title story, about a child who has been exiled to the circus by the ... Read More »

August 15, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

The Cloaca

By Andrew Hood

Zoologically speaking, the cloaca is the undifferentiated posterior orifice in birds, reptiles, and amphibians. It serves urinary, digestive, and reproductive functions carried out by specialized structures in other species. Thematically, The Cloaca is the perfect ... Read More »

June 26, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Gay Dwarves of America

By Anne Fleming

Traditional narrative strategies and formal experimentation, as well as fiction and autobiography, blend comfortably in Anne Fleming’s latest collection of short stories, the delightfully titled Gay Dwarves of America. Fleming, a University of British Columbia ... Read More »

June 25, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Whirl Away

By Russell Wangersky

Of the 12 stories that comprise Russell Wangersky’s new collection, only the last possesses an ending that could be called happy. In fact, the ending in question has more cautious optimism than unabashed joy, but ... Read More »

May 15, 2012 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Mad Hope

By Heather Birrell

There’s a voyeuristic quality to Heather Birrell’s stories. The Toronto author seems to have mastered the art of writing about universal themes and subjects – marriage, family, motherhood, death, sex – in a manner both ... Read More »

May 15, 2012 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Fiction: Short

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