Quickening

Christy Conte is a business analyst and entrepreneur in Ajax, Ontario.

Quickening, Griggs’s first published collection of short stories, is
an excellent example of good Canadian short fiction. The themes and
characters Griggs explores in these 16 stories very much reflect her
Manitoulin Island upbringing. The natural environment, particularly
water, plays a leading role in many of the stories. In the title story,
for example, water is as multifaceted as any human character: at once
disturbing, playful, ominous, and spiritful.

More generally, the stories are distinctly Canadian. Where but in
Canada could one so successfully describe calves as being “like long
white pike bellies”?

Griggs’s characters are wonderful rural eccentrics: small-town
gossips, would-be debutantes, drunken priests (several, in fact), and
visionary babies, to name a few. Griggs’s women, in particular, are
strong, surviving types: examples include Urla, the old woman in
“Visitation” who finally asserts herself after a lifetime of abuse;
and Marsha, the hard-driving, party-crashing singer in “Suddenly.”

Griggs is a wonderful writer. Successful on a narrative level, her
skill is particularly dazzling in descriptions that are as original as
they are musical. Despite an occasional foray into the esoteric,
Griggs’s world is real. The success of this collection, however,
ultimately stems from the author’s unique, sometimes quirky,
interpretation of a familiar landscape.