Wallflowers
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
In the opening story of Wallflowers, a girl is cat-sitting for her neighbor, sleeping in the neighbor's house. It's nearly identical to her mother's nearby-in the Copper Waters subdivision, they all are-but she likes it here, eating boiled eggs and watching TV, feeling out her freedom as heavy rains fall. And then a nearby dike fails. And the girl may be the only one left in Copper Waters.
Eliza Robertson can handle the shocking turn, but she also has a knack for the slow surprise, the realization that settles around you like snow. Her stories are deftly constructed and their perspectives-often those of the loners and onlookers, distanced by their gifts of observation-are unexpected. In "We Walked on Water," winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, a brother and sister train together for a race that will ultimately separate them forever. In "L'Étranger," shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize, a girl abroad in Marseille reconsiders her unendearing roommate after an intimate confrontation.
Robertson was raised on rugged Vancouver Island. She's traveled broadly since, and her stories travel, too, but the climate of her collection is influenced by her home. These carefully cultivated forms still flare with wildness, and each is still spacious enough for a reader to get lost in wonder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Robertson's debut collection, her moody homeland of Vancouver Island and the nature of human independence set a tone of poetic grace. The impressive opener "Who Will Water the Wallflowers" follows a girl cat-sitting for the neighbors as flood waters force her, with the pet nestled in her housecoat, to scale the rooftops to safety. The brief but emotionally crushing "L'Etranger" finds a young female scholar in southern France contending with an irksome Ukrainian roommate until the woman reveals devastating news and abandons the home. The epistolary "Roadnotes," told in one-sided missives from sibling to sibling, is a subtle meditation on family and memory. "Sea Life" deftly illustrates the tragic and beautiful way humanity intervenes for a husband and wife at their beach community, even at the most inconvenient of times. In spots, Robertson's writing may be too precious and overly embellished "Thoughts, Hints and Anecdotes..." is an interlinked barrage of artfully crafted, female-focused snippets of household tips, advice, observant mannerisms, and curious incidents. Overall, however, the collection shimmers with lush imagery as in the lovely closing story (winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize) set in British Columbia, where brother and sister triathletes find common ground while conditioning their bodies, but are unprepared for a tragic end result. Through the varying perspectives of loners, lovers, and misfits, Robertson distinguishes herself as a uniquely talented writer to watch.
