Reviewed by Timothy Niedermann
In this, her third collection of short stories (she has written five novels as well), Caroline Adderson keeps readers on their toes. These are excellent stories, but they are impossible to categorize. Each one has a different feel, a different intent.
The first takes place on New Year’s Eve, a couple is heading to a party. The woman of the couple wants to end the evening and go home. Her boyfriend insists they stay out and cruise from party to party, even those to which they haven’t been invited.
The stories that follow range widely: a man is anxious about a forthcoming colonoscopy, fearing the anaesthesia because his mother had died on an operating table, while his wife tells him to relax as she waits for their son to call from university; a woman is beginning a new job in a new town after separating from her husband; a gangster collecting money from various business owners; a sense of foreboding grows in a woman who has seen a suspicious man at her child’s playground; a man in BC wondering why his irritable single mother won’t tell him anything about her family back in Quebec.
The longest story, “From the Archives of the Hospital for the Insane,” takes place in a female insane asylum in 1908 and focuses on Margaret, who appears to be quite stable. Her main occupation is to try to make other women, especially new arrivals, feel better about themselves. Why these women are in the asylum varies. Some are genuinely disturbed. Others have conditions like depression or anxiety. Still others simply don’t fit in well with the outside world of the early 20th century, where Victorian attitudes about women still dominate. Some are totally sane and have been committed by their husbands or families. These, Margaret tries to help escape. Why Margaret is there—and why she stays—only slowly becomes clear.
Adderson’s skill is to avoid linear storytelling. Her characters are diverse, certainly, but one bit of consistency in the stories is that she creates layers for each that turn in unexpected ways. Whether it is secrets withheld or expectations dashed, Adderson keeps the reader guessing. An enthralling and revelatory collection.
A Way to Be Happy is published by Biblioasis.
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