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South of Elfrida by Holley Rubinsky (Brindle & Glass $19.95)
If there's a best short-story-of-the-year competition, we think Holley Rubinsky ought to submit either the title story for South of Elfrida, about a birdwatching field trip in Arizona, or 'Desert Dreams,' in which Nina rents a seventeen-foot Easy Loader from U-Haul to rescue Miriam from the nursing home because her mother "just wants to look at the ocean one last time.";
Most of Rubinsky's eighteen stories feature mature women in America's mid-west, usually estranged from, or missing, men. Each sentence is carefully constructed.
Oddly, many of the early stories include animals-turtles, emus, birds, a cat, a poodle, a rooster, a rat. It's those two aforementioned longer stories that generate a memorable resonance; either might have served as a better opener. The protagonist, Jean's, fascination with a self-assured but narcissistic "hawk man"; who leads a gaggle of female bird watchers through desolate Cochise County is ultimately supplanted by her loyalty to her bird-eating cat in 'South of Elfrida.' As in an Alice Munro story, the reader goes, "Yes, this is how life really is."; Fulfilling because it is unpredictable.
Rubinsky lives in Kaslo, the publisher is on Vancouver Island and the cover is garish orange, so don't hold your breath for a Giller nomination; but she's the real deal for anyone who enjoys sophisticated storytelling.
For several years Rubinsky was host of The Writers' Show, about writing and publishing, produced by Kootenay Coop Radio CJLY in Nelson.
978-1-927366-05-9
Most of Rubinsky's eighteen stories feature mature women in America's mid-west, usually estranged from, or missing, men. Each sentence is carefully constructed.
Oddly, many of the early stories include animals-turtles, emus, birds, a cat, a poodle, a rooster, a rat. It's those two aforementioned longer stories that generate a memorable resonance; either might have served as a better opener. The protagonist, Jean's, fascination with a self-assured but narcissistic "hawk man"; who leads a gaggle of female bird watchers through desolate Cochise County is ultimately supplanted by her loyalty to her bird-eating cat in 'South of Elfrida.' As in an Alice Munro story, the reader goes, "Yes, this is how life really is."; Fulfilling because it is unpredictable.
Rubinsky lives in Kaslo, the publisher is on Vancouver Island and the cover is garish orange, so don't hold your breath for a Giller nomination; but she's the real deal for anyone who enjoys sophisticated storytelling.
For several years Rubinsky was host of The Writers' Show, about writing and publishing, produced by Kootenay Coop Radio CJLY in Nelson.
978-1-927366-05-9
Submitted on June 3, 2013 in By David.
