sewn paper
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Author
Fiction
Fall 1997
128 pages
ISBN 0-88984-192-6
$14.95
Promise of Shelter
Robyn Sarah
Known since the early 1980s as an accomplished poet, Robyn Sarah turns her talents to prose with
this collection of short stories, Promise of Shelter.
Her first book of fiction, A Nice Gazebo, was published by Véhicule Press,
and was an `Editor's Choice' in Books in Canada.
One of the stories included in Promise of Shelter, `Accept My Story',
was a Journey Prize Anthology selection. Reviewer Frances Itani singled it
out as the work that most engaged her: `This is a moving, beautifully crafted
story, and the reader is drawn deep into its centre.'
This story also won a National Magazine Award, and was
shortlisted in Best American Short Stories 1994.
Promise of Shelter is linked not by a common
setting or characters,
but by narrative intent. It is storytelling that
steers a path between
layers of a situation so as to tell two stories at
once, setting up a counterpoint between the real and
the imagined, the literal and the figurative, the
mundane and the spiritual. The stories themselves,
with their recurring
motif of keys and doors, play variations on the theme
of shelter: of security
lost and found, refuge sought and denied. Details
accumulate and interact like chords in music, ordinary
events
and objects have the resonance of signs and omens, and
ordinary lives brush
the margins of their own vulnerability even as they
affirm their resilience. `What a treat it is to read stories that do not
seek to reduce
the complexity of our lives or the ambiguities of our
relationships, intriguing
stories that are profound without being heavy. There
are eight stories
here, some very short, others long, and all worth
reading, pondering and
then rereading.' Robyn Sarah, who lives in Montreal, has published several volumes of
poetry and a previous collection of short stories, A Nice Gazebo
1992). Her poet's sensibility is at work in her fiction, too,
transforming the most ordinary occurrences into extraordinary moments.
Something as mundane as repainting a kitchen table suddenly takes on
significance as an act of renewal. Sarah can hypnotize you with the
recounting of the most trivial, everyday events -- it's partly the tiny
shocks of recognition of small, barely conscious thoughts or gestures
that, at some level, you had assumed to be peculiarly your own. On the
other hand, she can write of events that have a strong potential for
melodrama -- suicide, mental breakdown, schizophrenia -- in a low-key,
sometimes conversational tone that conveys the bizarre, but emphasizes
the ordinariness in the midst of which the dramas occur. Unexpected
flashes of black humour also keep the stories grounded.
Throughout the work, there is tension between the outer, physical world
and the inner worlds of memory, imagination, and dream. "Accept my
story" circles the event at its centre, surrounding it with imagined
versions of its occurrence, and with connected memories. Its structure
could be compared to that of a mandala; the comparison probably comes to
mind because there is a sense in which many of these stories are
meditative. The most obvious case is "Gabriel at My Left Hand", for it
involves a journey up a mountain and an overnight vigil that is clearly
also a meditation, one that promises a form of enlightenment, if only
the two participants can grasp the moment. In "Shelter", Holly remembers
a dream she had had as a child in which she had thought herself utterly
lost, but then had suddenly recognized familiar streets and realized
that her grandmother's house was close by. "In delight and gratitude she
walked along in the feathery snow as if on air, making no sound, filled
with peace at the beauty of the night and the nearness of safety. . She
knew where she was going. She was nearly there." Something more than the
relief of finding home and family is implied; there is the suggestion of
an ultimate "shelter" and a sense of peace to be found. There are
Zen-like qualities to these stories, in their spareness, and
everydayness, as well as in their theme of homecoming. And like Zen
tales, they stay with you long after they are told, teasing and puzzling
the mind.'
- Faith Johnston, Prairie
Fire
- Helen Hacksel, Books in Canada
Photo by D. R. Cowles
