sewn paper
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Author
Fiction
1995
136 pages
ISBN 0-88984-163-2
$14.95
Influence of the Moon
Mary Borsky
Growing up stories have always been a popular genre in Canadian literature,
and now the canon is about to welcome a stellar new arrival in Mary
Borsky, author of the newly published short story collection Influence
of the Moon. Although fictional, the twelve surely crafted stories
in Influence of the Moon resonate with the immediacy of
memoir, so genuine are the emotions and the world they capture, so
subtle the mood and the times they evoke.
Irene Lychenko is a young Ukrainian-Canadian girl coming of age in
the northern Alberta town of Salt Prairie. The stories chronicle her growing
awareness of the rifts in her family and in her community as
she struggles to find her own identity in a world whose smallness
is at once comforting and stifling, familiar yet tinged with a strangeness
that hints of another, larger world beyond.
In `Ice,' Irene unwittingly betrays her illegally-fishing father, whose
enthusiasm for the Soviet space programme already sets him apart from the
other men in the town. In `The Bible Seller,' the confluence of a lightning
strike, her mother's departure for a puzzling hospital stay, and the visit
of an itinerant bible salesman gives Irene a foreboding of life's mysteries.
In `The Blue Dress,' a gift from her Aunt Rose awakens old resentments
in Irene's parents and arouses the stifled rage the young girl feels within
the constricting net of her family's simmering tensions. `The Queen of the
Land' is Irene's sickly baby sister, Baby, whose fragility summons
the girl's most intense feelings of love. `Eclipse' shows how Irene and
her mother and father become isolated by their private griefs over
Baby's death.
In `World Fair,' Irene, her father and her brother, Amel, make a spontaneous
trip to the Seattle World Fair, leaving behind Irene's mother, who has
fallen prey to recurrent nervous breakdowns. In `City Slickers,' the
city versus country rivalry that comes to the fore when Aunt Rose brings
home her new husband Dez crystallizes the many other divisions within
the family.
Irene's resentment at playing second fiddle to her brother Amel makes
her vulnerable to the spiritual seduction of a Pentecostal minister in
`The Short-Wave Radio.' In `Map of the Known World,' 16-year-old Irene's
growing independence asserts itself most forcefully when she refuses to
agree to an arranged marriage with an older Ukrainian man, jumping off
the school roof to make her point.
In the title story, `Influence of the Moon,' Irene's assertion that she
hears the singing of angels gratifies her mother's prayer meeting group,
but how different is it from the other illusions shared by her family?
In `Paper House,' Irene senses that the suburban contentment espoused
by her financ[e'] and his friends might be just as confining as the
world she has struggled so hard to leave behind. `Blessing' shows how
Irene's understanding of her mother's relationship with Irene's grandmother
helps her reach a tentative reconciliation with her past.
Influence of the Moon marks the debut of a writer whose deceptively
simple prose and masterful modulation of scene and emotion leave the
reader in no doubt that one is in the presence of a fully matured and
distinctive talent.
Mary Borsky has published stories in several magazines, including Quarry, NeWest Review, Geist, The Queen's Quarterly and Grain. Her work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories '93, The Journey Prize Anthology and The Third Macmillan Anthology. Influence of the Moon is her first book, which she describes as `very autobiographical and not at all biographical. Real life is more boring and less believable than fiction.'
Mary Borsky lives in Ottawa.