What Can't Be Changed Shouldn't Be Mourned

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Valgardson has built a solid reputation as one of Canada’s first-rank
writers of powerful short stories. This collection of 14 pieces—some
fairly lengthy, a few covering only a page or two—is generally dark
and brooding in tone. Indeed, certain stories are brutally stark and
cruel (notably “A Matter of Balance,” in which two murderous bikers
are left to slow, certain death by the man they have been stalking; and
“Wrinkles,” which involves the vengeful killing of a perceived
murderer/mugger—thugs kill an elderly woman for her pension money, and
one of them pays full price for both).

Valgardson’s characters tend to learn, without warning, more than
they ever wanted to know about themselves and what they are capable of
doing, and about the dark depths underlying the placid surface of even
the mildest-seeming life. In a few of the stories the author explores
his own Icelandic connections, both in Manitoba and in Iceland itself.
This is a meaty offering, tough-minded and disturbing, and likely to
remain in the reader’s memory.