Wednesday, 8 February 2017

The Two of Us by Kathy Page

Another book club title, this collection of short stories was long-listed for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction. The sixteen stories are in many ways small vignettes with enormous human emotion and need hidden under the calm surface of everyday life. The characters are familiar and ordinary: a married couple go to the hospital to receive the results of a medical test, a hairdresser does a special assignment for a long-time client, a young gay man spends an excruciating evening with his mother, and an autistic child wants nothing more than her own dog. Each story is small and self-contained, focusing on tiny details and the inner monologues of the characters. 
Throughout there is a tone of tired resignation; the sense that for most characters their needs and desires will always outstrip their reality. As a homeless character in the story “Bees” explains: “What pisses me off is that the things you want are easier to get than the things I want…Most of the things I want are impossible. It isn’t fair.” 
When read one after the other, the stories can start to take on a melancholic sameness that I found tiring toward the end. But I simultaneously wanted to go back and reread some of my favourite stories to better savour the nuance, the fine visual details and the profound beauty they offered.
Three out of five smileys.🙂🙂

No comments:

Post a Comment