The only thing wrong with Zsuzsi Gartner's debut collection, All the Anxious Girls on Earth (Key Porter $18.95), is that it has been over-praised-which is hardly the fault of the author. Reviewers in Toronto and Vancouver have gone bananas over Gartner's 'high octane linguistic rocketry'. But Gartner says when she read her work in Nanaimo, the audience was mostly dumbfounded.
"Lila had a heart like a monster truck-a V-8 engine that roared and seldom needed retooling, huge wheels that could drive over anything, fat pistons pumping for victory, a gas tank of biblical proportions, and was rust-proof to boot."; Her satire introduces a jilted office worker who places bomb threats and a green-haired girl who eats designer soap. And it forces literati, including her publishers-who misspelled her name on the advance copy-to add Zsuzsi to their spell-checkers. 1-55263-029-3

[BCBW SUMMER 1999]