Emma Donoghue
Short stories intrigue me. Will I be absorbed quickly enough and my
interest sufficiently engaged? Will I be willing to separate from these brief
relationships to move on to the next? With Emma Donoghue’s collection, the
answer is yes. She repeatedly delivers engaging stories and quirky characters.
Donoghue is a highly talented author and I was impressed with how readily she hooked me. Her stories are about transitions: departures, being in transit,
arrivals, and aftermaths. All are occasions when people are vulnerable. Many of
the characters were not ones I would typically seek out: “gold miner,
counterfeiter, slave, dishwasher, prostitute, attorney, sculptor, mercenary,
elephant, corpse,” as the book jacket highlights. Donoghue’s fertile
imagination creates these characters by building on brief newspaper clippings that
inspired these tales. The clippings were written between 1639 and 1967, with
most from the 1800s, and include settings in London, Texas, Louisiana, the
Yukon, and Newmarket, Ontario. I would encourage readers to avoid checking the
newspaper reports that follow each story until after they read the tale itself.
Personally, I like to remain in discovery mode during a story, so I preferred the
additional enlightenment at their conclusion.
These helicopter vignettes enjoyably pass the time and prompt me to
be watchful for Ms. Donoghue’s next publication.
- Jennifer Mackie
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