Seasons of Ordinary Time

Lori A. Dunn is an ESL teacher and editor of the Toronto women’s
magazine Feminie.

Painting powerful images or creating dreamy moods with her prose, Butt
writes seamless and entertaining stories. Touching on themes of art,
aging and dying, and family relationships, she creates a wide variety of
characters to tell her stories. These protagonists include the recurring
character of Bea Chambers. The reader peeks in on Bea at crucial times
in her life: as she is learning about love, death, and relationships.

The two longest stories in the collection, “Truths and Epiphanies”
and “The Names of Horses,” are accounts of Bea’s relationships
with her mother and her father, respectively. These stories give us
complete character sketches of Bea’s parents in relation to their
individual life’s passion. “A Magician’s Manual” is an
enchanting litany of all the loves in a young girl’s life, and the
long-reaching effects those first loves have on the woman as she grows
beyond her idealistic fantasies of James T. Kirk and Adam Cartwright.
The imaginative run-on narrative “Darleen” is a delight in which
Butt illustrates her keen awareness of the rhythms of language.

This collection is wonderful, but the most pleasant surprise from
Butt’s prose is her ability to put unnameable feelings and experiences
into words that give the reader a jolt of recognition. This woman has
written highly enjoyable stories that are sure to be re-read and
recommended, at least until her next book is published, and probably
beyond.