sewn paper
Fiction
March 1996
176 pages
ISBN 0-88984-169-1
$14.95
Lovers & Other Strangers
Carol Malyon
Carol Malyon writes of women's lives, of their
relationships with lovers, mothers, children, other women. She explores the relationships
between memory and truth. Lovers & Other Strangers
consists of small stories, snapshots of women's lives in specific times and situations. The
setting and characters vary but the theme remains fixed: that
there is a fundamental and irreconcilable discord between men and women, in their view of the world, their
modes of communication, the way they view themselves, the way they view others.
`Pencils' shows us a woman observing a father and son talking. She quietly watches
while drawing on past observation of men talking amongst themselves and wonders how it is they can be
so inarticulate, how they forget so many words. How emptiness slowly fills their heads
and pushes away their memories making it virtually impossible for them to tell their own history.
`Bellefaire' is about Sara who often feels it would be easy to become someone else, to slip
into someone else's life. She watches passing strangers, their shadows overlapping then
moving apart and wonders why there is so much separateness.
She somehow feels this movement of the shadows corresponds to the movement
of affection shared by men and women. She imagines she can dream
the edges of these shadows away.
`Discarding' chronicles the difficulty of being a mother, wife and ex-wife.
How Ellie finds she roams, pockets full of guilt, not knowing how best to remedy a situation.
Not feeling quite the perfect mother she tries to make up lost love by buying her
children a dog. The dog ends up neglected. She shaves her underarms and legs for her husband.
She resents it. She wonders with bewilderment what to say to her ever more distant and silent husband.
Their marriage falls apart.
Carol Malyon's stories are nearly all unconventionally brief and intense in feeling.
They are essentially a poet's stories but they most definitely are not that revolting
hybrid `prose-poetry'. This writing is hard, direct, forceful. She is among
those writers who are forcing us to reconsider the nature and form of the short story in Canada.
The stories are often prickly. They illuminate, but illuminate darkly.
Malyon gazes down into the emotional chasm which seems to seperate men and
women, parents and children, and the images she brings to the surface are not
quite like anything you've read before ... though you recognize them and know
they're true. Perhaps the only Canadian stories at all comparable are
those of Carol Shields in Various Miracles and The Orange Fish.
`Carol Malyon's short stories burst with energy and her non-stop pace
captivates the reader.'
- Ottawa Citizen
![[Carol Malyon]](malyon.jpg)