South Hill Girls

Carolyn D. Redl is a sessional lecturer of English at the University of
Alberta.

The 10 stories in this collection are about characters who are, in one
way or another, connected to the South Hills, “known to North Hill
snobs as Garlic Heights,” a place representing the kind of
middle-of-the-road neighborhood that can be found in any large prairie
centre. Most stories are set in the present time, but romp through
memories dating back as early as the 1940s and 1950s.

In their interconnectedness of action and shared characters, the
stories are reminiscent of Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine, but here
the characters are not Native. As is the case with Erdrich’s book, the
pleasure in reading results from keeping track of the relationships
between characters and placing the shifting narrators into the
increasingly complicated genealogy.

Most stories either highlight or at least mention two main
characters—Allison Ransome and Edith Ashdown. The latter is first
revealed as one of the snobs, and then, because of her fate as caregiver
to her dying father and sick husband, as an individual of some mettle.
The lives of these endearing characters touch on a range of topics and
relationships. Sapergia’s stories are consistently understated
initiations; like a summer prairie wind on greening fields, they profile
an emotional myriorama.