Double-Voicing the Canadian Short Story is the first comparative study of eight internationally and nationally acclaimed writers of short fiction: Sandra Birdsell, Timothy Findley, Jack Hodgins, Thomas King, Alistair MacLeod, Olive Senior, Carol Shields and Guy Vanderhaeghe. With the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature going to Alice Munro, the “master of the contemporary short story,” this art form is receiving the recognition that has been its due and—as this book demonstrates—Canadian writers have long excelled in it. From theme to choice of narrative perspective, from emphasis on irony, satire and parody to uncovering the multiple layers that make up contemporary Canadian English, the short story provides a powerful vehicle for a distinctively Canadian “double-voicing”. The stories discussed here are compelling reflections on our most intimate roles and relationships and Kruk offers a thoughtful juxtaposition of themes of gender, mothers and sons, family storytelling, otherness in Canada and the politics of identity to name but a few. As a multi-author study, Double-Voicing the Canadian Short Story is broad in scope and its readings are valuable to Canadian literature as a whole, making the book of interest to students of Canadian literature or the short story, and to readers of both.

Laurie Kruk teaches English at Nipissing University in North Bay, Canada. She has published The Voice is the Story: Conversations with Canadian Writers of Short Fiction (Mosaic, 2003) and Double-Voicing the Canadian Short Story (Ottawa UP, 2016). She is also the author of three poetry collections: Theories of the World (Netherlandic, 1992), Loving the Alien (YSP, 2006), and My Mother Did Not Tell Stories (Demeter, 2012). This last collection is described as weaving “tales that powerfully uncover the necessity of vocalizing that which is learned, experienced, and traditionally unshared” (ARC Poetry Magazine).

Laurie Kruk's profile page

Kruk (...) celebrate[s] the achievements of short-story writers as well as the kind of national identity, based mainly on regional identification, that they helped to highlight. (...) Her conclusion reads like a celebration of both family and community, in all its variety, in a remote part of the country. And this is the main point of the book: to celebrate the achievements of short-story writers as well as the kind of national identity, based mainly on regional identification, that they helped to highlight.

Issue #236