| Sandra Sabatini’s latest collection of short stories, The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie, is arresting for its ability to reveal the darkness that hides underneath the surface of everyday life. As various characters navigate through a memorable array of situations, innocence is compromised and a dark truth reveals itself.
In the title story, Penny begins to understand the difference between the anticipation of what something could be and what it really is when she visits a historic tourist spot with her school group. In "Balance of Probability," Katie’s innocence is questioned during a courtroom trial. "Holes" is the story of recurring character Connie, who impatiently waits for her aunts to pierce her ears, hoping she will then enter the world of grownups and their many secrets. In "Maternal Instinct," a wily mother raccoon eludes a family’s attempts at capture, revealing their imperfections in the process. Sabatini’s sharp observations make this collection difficult to resist, and even those who have reservations about reading short stories may find that they can’t put this book down.
Sabatini’s first short story collection, The One with the News, was short listed for the Upper Canada Writers' Craft Award. Her work has also been short listed twice for the Journey Prize, for the title story in The One with the News and the title story in The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, and Prism International. Currently at work on a novel set in Second World War Italy and North Africa, Sabatini also teaches English at the University of Guelph.
Fast Forward: You graduated from the creative writing program at the University of Guelph. Was it always your intention to be a writer?
Sandra Sabatini: I thought I would be a veterinarian when I was very young. But I have been writing most of my life. It’s hard to think about it as an intention. More like a dream.
FFWD: There’s a feeling of dread in many of these stories, often having to do with innocence being compromised. What made you want to explore this theme more fully?
Sabatini: I was at a party, years ago, a home party for some kind of skin care, so full of women, of course, and the talk turned to our experiences as adolescent girls and almost everyone in a room of 25 women had a story to tell about that very sense of transgression, innocence compromised. It made me think about the construction of gender, about a guy’s world and what it might be like and how boys might be raised somehow to think that such transgressive behaviour was all right. This was balanced by a sense that boys are fabulous, wonderful things, which I knew from being a mother to my sons.
FFWD: The people and places in this book are so vivid. Does any of the inspiration for these stories come from your own experiences, or people that you know?
Sabatini: There are certainly elements of all these things, experience, people, not to mention landscape, weather and certain knick-knacks! You never know what will be the catalyst. But, the stories themselves are fabrications made from something real, if that makes sense.
FFWD: In addition to The Dolphins at Sainte Marie, you’ve published another successful collection of short stories (The One with the News) and an academic work (Making Babies: Infants in Canadian Fiction). Now you’re at work on your first novel. Is this a very different experience from writing short stories?
Sabatini: The novel is hugely different. Since it is historical, I am researching it extensively and learning all kinds of things. It can also be an intimidating process, too large to envision. It is stretching me and challenging me, but it is also pretty exciting.
FFWD: You have mentioned in an interview with CBC that you love reading and writing short stories. Any particular collection that is memorable or inspiring to you?
Sabatini: Mavis Gallant, Thomas King, not to mention Kafka and Chekhov! I read Winesburg, Ohio and was amazed. Lives of Girls and Women is one of those pivotal reads. I also loved Russell Smith’s Young Men, Mark Anthony Jarman’s 19 Knives and especially Terry Griggs’s collection, Quickening. There are lots that stay with me and inspire me. |
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