Fever

Noreen Mitchell is a librarian with the Toronto Public Library.

The emotions that drive both women and men are revealed in this fine
collection of short stories. From the woman who engages in an adulterous
relationship with a fellow hotel guest while her husband lies close to
death in the hospital (“Fever”), from the parents experiencing the
“generation gap” with their children (“The Metric System”), from
the farmer who contemplates the impending loss of his farm due to
drought conditions (“Gabriel”), and, indeed, from all the stories
there are gentle lessons about the nature of human behavior and inner
turmoil.

Even though the writing is consistently smooth and polished in all the
stories, two stories deserve special mention for the completeness of
their structure and the satisfying portrayal of characters in particular
situations. “The Prize” depicts a writer who, after winning an
important literary prize, finds writing a second novel difficult, and
seeks inspiration by buying and moving into the run-down house in a
small Prairie town that was once the home of a major author, now dead.
The writer’s despair and fear of failure are interestingly handled, as
are the details of town life and attitudes towards the local Hutterites.
The experience of Charlotte as a child spending summers in the household
of her strange and troubled cousins is the subject of “What the Voices
Say.” Her relatives’ very different lifestyle is fascinating yet
disturbing, “it was all so frightening and bizarre and beautiful and
forbidden,” and the reader is drawn into that world along with
Charlotte by means of Butala’s masterly writing. In both these stories
there is a touch of mystery and spirituality that is common to many of
the other stories also.

In sum, this is an excellent collection of short fiction from the
author of The Gates of the Sun and other works.