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Fiction Short Stories (single Author)

Splinter & Shard

Stories

by (author) Lulu Keating

Publisher
ECW Press
Initial publish date
May 2024
Category
Short Stories (single author), Contemporary Women, Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781770417458
    Publish Date
    May 2024
    List Price
    $24.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781778522734
    Publish Date
    May 2024
    List Price
    $10.99

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Description

A smashing debut collection from award-winning filmmaker Lulu Keating

Splinter & Shard is the debut story collection by acclaimed filmmaker-turned-writer Lulu Keating. Vivid and precise, the stories in this collection offer an uncompromising journey into what it means to be human.

Keating catches her characters at their pivotal moments of discovery, self-reckoning, and change. A dutiful mother of grown children learns a life-shattering secret about two of her children that upends her life. A macho man in mid-life must reconcile himself to his new role as a cosmetics consultant. A young woman, pregnant and unhappy, travels to the Yukon to bury her husband. An old woman turns away from her family to bond with the convicts of the small jail next door. An orphaned girl stumbles onto an unexpected connection with a stranger.

In these stories, flaws and strengths are writ large as characters fumble toward redemption.

From flash fiction to deep-dive character studies, Splinter & Shard turns over the rocks of everyday experience to reveal the psychological and philosophical truths underneath. The stories range back and forth in time, from Nova Scotia to the Yukon (with a side trip to Florida), and explore universal themes — loss, infidelity, faith, mortality, and love.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Lulu Keating is an award-winning TV and film director. Her stories have been published in Geist, the Globe and Mail, North of Ordinary, and What’s Up Yukon. Born in Nova Scotia, she now lives in Dawson City, Yukon.

Excerpt: Splinter & Shard: Stories (by (author) Lulu Keating)

From Mother’s Day

Margaret sits in an ancient rocking chair on her deck. God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world. She can’t stop herself from grinning. Who cares if the old woman is grinning?

Nobody can see her.

The table beside her holds a gin and tonic. On a cold day, it would be a hot rum toddy.

Today is a glorious spring day with a sun that is warm enough to bead the glass. Also on the table is a calendar with “In” and “Out” marked beside names like Bryden and John Angus and Buddy. The local weekly paper, the Chronicle, is open to the police report.

She’s on the highest deck in town, built off the second floor of her two-story house. The only way out to the deck is through her bedroom. Nobody gets to come here, not her friends and certainly not her overly protective adult kids. They would want to raise the railing another few feet and put a harness on her.

Beside her house is the Court House adjoined by the small jail, and behind that is a fenced-in exercise yard. From her vantage point, she can see over the 8-foot fence topped with barbed wire. Every day, between 3 and 4 pm in every kind of weather, the prisoners are turned out.

It’s almost three, and Margaret rocks in happy anticipation. She inherited the rocking chair from her mother, a nursing chair the perfect height for a mother’s arms to cradle a baby’s head. With her first infant, John Charles, Margaret had moved the chair to the window to alleviate the tedium of the daily feedings. One day as he suckled greedily, Margaret’s glazed eyes suddenly focused on the prisoners being released into the yard. Who were these men? What crimes had they committed? Why had she never paid attention before? From then on, she nursed the baby, whichever baby, in the chair by the window. When the prisoners took their exercise, she’d be there to watch. She’d even wake a sleeping infant to feed it during the exercise hour. What mother would disturb a baby’s sleep in those early months of life? Was she that bored, that lonely? Apparently yes.

Gazing down on the prisoners, she’d felt comradeship. The endless demands from pre-verbal humans were her ball and chain. Her big house was her prison.

Poor Walter. In his world, the office at the City Hall, he had control. In marriage, he was often ambushed by Margaret’s obsessions. She told him she needed a deck, not on the front but on the back of the house, not on the ground level but on the second floor. She claimed it was to watch the children in the yard. From the back door she couldn’t see what they were up to, but from a high deck, she could do the mending and watch that the children didn’t kill each other.

They were up to dangerous games now. Hadn’t Randall tied little Grace to the tree at the far end of the yard when they played Cowboys and Indians? Wasn’t it hours before Margaret found the poor girl?

Walter did the household accounts. When he listed their expenses, a deck did not appear among them. He picked up his briefcase and went to work.

Margaret packed a small suitcase. She planned to take the train to her mother’s, but she had no money. Walter doled out cash as it was needed, and only the amount she needed. Groceries were purchased on credit: an account in the name of Mr. Walter MacSween. Also, she couldn’t just walk out because the three youngest weren’t old enough for school yet. She wouldn’t let a disagreement between parents make the children suffer. She waited on the sofa, hands folded. The older kids arrived for lunch. They sensed something was strange, so they gathered the little ones and all sat quietly at the kitchen table, waiting to be fed. When Walter came home for lunch, Margaret went to the door, put on her coat, and picked up suitcase. She asked for money for the train. She watched his familiar face scrunch up with disbelief. Then she saw hurt, replaced by fear. In all their years of marriage, through all the insecurities and the illnesses and even the two miscarriages, she had never seen him this vulnerable. He took the suitcase from her hand and led her up the stairs. In their bedroom, she spread her arms wide to describe where the wall would be cut open for the door to the new deck.

 

 

Editorial Reviews

“The women in these pages walk away from convention, while the men struggle to make sense of the world. I love the ways that shafts of humour and farce pierce the confusion of self-discovery, while Keating’s careful attention to landscape and language creates a complete world within each story. A wonderful collection.” — Charlotte Gray, CM, author of Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt

“Highest praise for Splinter & Shard: hard-boiled and humming with energy. Like the best dance partner, Lulu Keating takes you by the hand, spins you around, keeps you on your toes, and leaves you smitten. More please!” — Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes

“Keating’s characters walk in and out of these recorded moments. Authentic and flawed, they are whole people whose lives continue past these infectious stories of resilience, family, lovers, and rough terrain.” — Charlie Petch, author of Why I Was Late

“Vivid and evocative, these richly rewarding stories dig deeply into the human experiences of love, loss, and hope.” — Anna Porter

“While the stories are short (some only a couple of pages long), the characters and settings are colourful and fully realized. Keating’s relatable protagonists often reconsider their futures after contending with a life-altering event. Many of her women are strong and ambitious, yet they regret missing out on more autonomous lives. Through their attempts to find meaning and connect with others, they exhibit a vulnerability and tenacity palpable to readers.” — Literary Review of Canada, Bookworm newsletter

“Keating seems to be contrasting the need to exert control over our lives through our institutions with the larger uncertainties of what fate has in store for us. It is insightful moments such as this that make Splinter and Shard worthy of any reader’s attention.” — Miramichi Reader