Close Calls

Noreen Mitchell is a librarian with the Toronto Public Library.

This collection of short fiction concerns the close calls or near
tragedies that befall girls and young women. In some cases the danger is
real, as in the title story, when a teenager accepts a ride in a car
with a stranger, or in “Living with the Dark,” when a young woman
discovers she is not alone in the department store she has hidden in
after closing. In other stories, it is the perception of a threat or the
potential for danger that is the source of the tension that is
controlled so effectively throughout. The young girl in “Passing
On,” for instance, is excessively preoccupied with her own mortality
and considers a minor injury a precursor to death. In “The Best Part
of Summer,” Maude is once removed from personal injury herself but
suffers the danger of Lovesick Lake through the disappearance of her
toddler cousin, and the peril faced by two underaged teens at a
restricted movie (in “Living on the Lake”) is more imagined than
real.

All of the stories are tightly written, with each one evoking a distant
yet familiar time and place. This is nostalgia with a hard edge,
however: the girls in these stories are exposed to a variety of evils,
injury, and loss through the painful experiences of making choices,
taking risks, and growing older.