Quill and Quire

Fiction: Short

The Withdrawal Method

By Pasha Malla

At first glance, Pasha Malla’s intriguing first short-fiction collection, The Withdrawal Method, seems like a mishmash of narrative oddities, complete with a perplexingly unappealing title. But long after I had finished reading them, Malla’s stories ... Read More »

May 20, 2008 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Blackouts

By Craig Boyko

The title of Victoria-based Craig Boyko’s debut collection refers to many things, sometimes literally and other times more obliquely: the mandatory darkening of homes and streets during the Blitz; a person passing out due to ... Read More »

March 28, 2008 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Barnacle Love

By Anthony De Sa

The latest trend to grip Canadian publishing – immigrant literature – has been both refreshing and an inevitablity. It has given prominence to the voices of a significant and influential group within Canadian society – ... Read More »

March 28, 2008 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

My White Planet

By Mark Anthony Jarman

Mark Anthony Jarman’s new collection of stories is something of a rarity in Canadian short fiction. It does not follow the tried-and-true template of the traditional Chekhovian story, which prizes naturalism and a familiar narrative ... Read More »

March 17, 2008 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

A Grave in the Air

By Stephen Henighan

The eight stories that comprise author and combative literary critic Stephen Henighan’s new collection of short fiction, most of them set in Central Europe, deftly capture the isolation and disconnectedness of the outsider through expatriate ... Read More »

December 20, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Pardon Our Monsters

By Andrew Hood

It is hard to overestimate the influence that James Joyce’s 1914 collection Dubliners has had on the development of the modern short story. Itself modelled on the stories of Chekhov, Dubliners solidified naturalism as the ... Read More »

December 20, 2007 | Filed under: Fiction: Short