Sometimes fiction is most impressive in technical or abstract terms. It's not the characters that matter most, it's the storytelling, how we feel in the author's hands and how we get through their mazes-stories can literally be 'amazing' adventures of comprehension rather than action.

Car chases count, but life is also a series of Borgesian labyrinths. Many of Sheila Peters' loosely linked ten stories in Tending the Remnant Damage (Beach Holme $18.95) unfold in this manner, like games of lost 'n' found, like contrasting dreams. These dreams often come at us from two voices. Sometimes it's as if two spotlights were set at 180-degree angles, focused on opposite sides of the same sculpture.

When we alternate back and forth between potentially dueling viewpoints, naturally life can seem paradoxical. They generate 'conflicts of interest'-the friction in much of Sheila Peters' fiction-and orientation matters as much as outcome.

A punked-up Vancouver girl accompanies a crusty grandmother on a tense hunting trek in the drizzly woods.

Two old people on a farm contemplate death and the strange goings-on of their neighbours.

Peters' dualism works well when coupled with the clarity of her descriptions and her poetic turns of phrase. Or, put more bluntly, much of the time I had no idea where the stories were going, but I was confident the author did.

In the final story, Breathing Fire, a character named Tomas serves as Peters' narrator; while another character named Jimmy-having been sedated after being badly burned-relives the same story in a state of delirium. Looking into his past, Tomas sees "Something older ... than love. Deeper than anger. It's not a feeling I'm accustomed to, this somehow electric darkness.";

Tending the Remnant Damage is Sheila Peters' first book of fiction, a sometimes mystifying, always challenging work. Into the electric darkness we go, with hands on Sheila Peters' shoulders. 0-88878-417-1

[Robert Stelmach / BCBW 2001]