Boundless Alberta: New Fiction

Peter Roberts is a former Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union and
author of George Costakis: A Russian Life in Art.

This present anthology contains 36 stories, all previously published, by
36 authors. There is no “Alberta” theme; indeed, there is no theme
at all. Some of the stories are set in Alberta, but could just as well
have been set elsewhere. The editor defends this “no theme” policy
on the excellent grounds that Albertans come from every corner of the
world, have roots everywhere, and write about everything. What is on
display here is a great array of talent writing about vastly different
things in vastly different ways.

Some stories are more successful than others, although there are no
total failures. Rudy Wiebe contributes a polished, graceful,
good-natured story set in Prague. Franz Kafka is the ostensible subject,
but the story’s real subject is the contentious, yet fundamentally
joyous, relationship between a young man and a young woman. The hand of
the master is plain to see in this story. Other stories are not much
more than undergraduate exercises, to which Wiebe, when he was professor
of creative writing at the University of Alberta, would not have given
much more than a passing mark. Most stories fall between these two
extremes.