>>REVIEW
A MINOR PLANET FOR YOU AND OTHER STORIES
Leslie Greentree
(The University of Alberta Press, 208 pp.)
They say summer is a time to indulge in lighter reading – the ubiquitous chick-lit, murder mysteries, romance. I say, what about the often ignored and maligned short story collection? Read a story, annihilate some dandelions; read a story, cut the lawn; read a story, blender another margarita. You get the picture.
I sucked up Leslie’s two volumes of poetry, guys named bill and go-go dancing for elvis, published by Frontenac Press, then enviously awaited her debut collection of short stories. I mean, the University of Alberta Press actually asked her to write the collection.
Greentree’s stories are full of exes, owners, takers and dreamers. In "Whether Mondays are Odd or Even," Karen falls onto evidence that her husband is having an affair on her way to her regular colposcopy. Since NHL encroaches far into June these days, the crush the protagonist has in the story "Hot Chocolate With Guy Lafleur" is more than appropriate summer reading. "Chicken Fight" is an eerie look into the nefarious world of drinking, country living, guns and lust. Perhaps my favourite is "Ramona’s Escape" – a peek into a young woman’s life entailing a best-friend relationship with her mother (by acclamation), her lingering and intrusive thoughts about divorce, and her new-found discovery of her own sexuality, albeit with the disdain and shock of a new-found pimple on prom night.
Like her poetry, Greentree’s shorts make a reader laugh, smirk, tear up and get the willies within the same story. The narratives cover the silent explosions, indeed implosions, of daily life, but I read them for the gems – the sporadic never-seen-it-coming descriptions. Lines like, "I feel like someone broke in and smelled my panties." Like, she wished she knew "the right way to move her hands, or her head, to fit herself inside the moment gracefully" and "Christine doesn’t seem to understand beer breaks on road trips." Such lines may initially caress, or pinch, or jar, but left me wondering how Greentree belly-crawled into my deepest thoughts. You’ll wonder too. |
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