No One Knows About Us by Bridget Canning

This is Canning’s third book, and first collection of short stories. I loved her novels, The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes and Some People’s Children, so I had high expectations for her short stories. Happily, they measured up. I didn’t really have any doubts that they would.

One of the stories I enjoyed the most is a four-part story sprinkled throughout the collection. In Gutless Bravado, a woman reflects on the purpose of gut feelings and imagines that she has had her gut feelings surgically removed along with her stomach. She first suspects this when she’s able to give presentations at work without feeling her usual nervous butterflies. Then, when she accidentally shoplifts she doesn’t get the nagging feeling to go back and pay. So, she does it again. And now she’s planning revenge on the guy with the bumper sticker that says: Let’s play carpenter. First, we get hammered, and then I nail you.

At the end of the collection is a short novella called Mindfull, in which a woman’s positivity at work starts pissing everyone off. But she’s obsessed with positivity guru Murray Dove and thinks everyone else will eventually come around. When she meets and gets involved with him, things get out-of-hand. This story reminded me of Sarah Selecky’s Radiant Shimmering Light and Goddess by Deborah Hemming.

Janelle and Velma convulse into giggles until they’re holding themselves up. Despair laughter–Murray writes about it in the second chapter of “Think It, Be It,” which I read on the subway this morning. The instinct to laugh during hardship proves the natural state of our minds is seeking joy, producing a positive reaction. Amazing how I just read this and here it is happening. The universe speaks.

Other stories in this collection include: A woman who gets an email from an old flame seemingly out-of-the-blue when he believes he may be about to die; a childless, middle-aged couple still fighting over the chores; two friends who haven’t seen each other in 15 years suspect each other at a Mummers Parade; a woman inhales an unknown substance at a party; an older woman dying of cancer starts experimenting with drugs; a man gets drugged and is then accused of drugging others; a woman takes it upon herself to help out a tenant with hoarding problems with dire consequences; a woman at the hospital getting an MRI thinks about her boyfriend as she goes through the process. “The MRI ejects me slowly, like an old VCR.”

I was reading this collection during the wildfires in Nova Scotia in May and June and took note of this line: “Look at those clouds. It will rain soon. This world could use a good, hard rain.”

No One Knows about Us was a finalist for the 2023 Alistair MacLeod Award for short fiction.

Eyes In Front When Running by Willow Kean

We think of having children as a ‘normal’ and relatively easy thing to do. Parents and children are everywhere, right? It must be easy! This novel illustrates how untrue that really is. Especially when you’re unsure about wanting children. Or maybe your partner is unsure. If you want to be together, you kind of have to be on the same page on this one.

In Eyes in Front When Running, Chloe and Jamie are in this situation. Jamie wants children–definitely–and Chloe is unsure. For a while, she goes along with Jamie’s efforts to have a child because she loves him, but soon the tension is unbearable. Throughout all this drama, there are babies and pregnant women everywhere. But there’s also infertility and miscarriages. Children and babies are a big deal. Having one when you don’t want to is a big deal, and not having one when you want to is a big deal. Neither of these scenarios are the ones we see on a daily basis on the street, at the park, in the schools. A baby (or the absence of a baby) can take a huge toll on a person.

I can’t talk too much about this story without spoiling it for others, but I will say: this book is insightful, emotional, and funny with a properly unsatisfying ending. You just never know where life is going to take you. Highly recommended for anyone who loves reading about families and relationships. And turkey dinners.

[Her] heart filled up, then sank like a stone, heavy with regret and bursting with love.

She ventured in and stood in front of the pregnancy tests, conveniently placed next to the condoms and spermicidal jelly. The look-what-you-should-have-dones next to the ha-ha-too-lates.

In the most recent issue of Atlantic Books Today, there’s an article commemorating the 50th birthday of Breakwater Books, an independent publisher based out of St. John’s, Newfoundland. I have read and loved many of their books over the years, including all the books listed in this post from March, 2022.

We’re basically a discovery machine looking for the new voice that will excite and bring that voice to the rest of Canada.