The Dragonfly Fling

Noreen Mitchell is a librarian with the Toronto Public Library.

This collection of short fiction, consisting of 65 pieces ranging in
length from one to four pages, barrages the reader with a wealth of
ideas and observations. Some, like “Lineage,” are snatches of
thought (“Do ancestors have to be dead? Of course not. In fact, some
of them have yet to be born, to supply the missing question for the
answers we can only partially frame”), while others are exquisite
vignettes (“Symmetry”) or elaborate caricatures (“The Great
Northern Migrant Snot-Picker and His Dog”). Many are quite black in
tone, but at the same time humorous and absurd (“The Head,” “The
Nose,” “Domestic Bliss”). There is also anger and sadness about
the state of the world and life’s unpleasantness (“Kincardine,”
“Snapshot from the Fifties”). These prose works are poetic in their
richness and economy of language. Their constant “what if?” quality
makes this collection a stimulating and thought-provoking package.