Bending at the Bow

June M. Blurton is a retired speech pathologist.

This is a story about loneliness, and the lengths to which a woman will
go to find a companion. Sylvie and Annie were childhood friends; they
met again 17 years later and lived together for six years. Eighteen
months after Sylvie’s death in a car accident, Annie is still mourning
her and keeps Sylvie’s ashes in a casket in a closet, but she
desperately needs another woman to share her life. Unfortunately, she
picks Alexa, who, in her turn, is mourning a broken relationship with
Janet.

In spite of the solemn theme, the writing is not depressing. In fact it
is very funny, and the characters are wonderful. Sylvie’s father is a
United Church minister whose relationship with some female members of
his congregation is not conventional. Sylvie’s brother is a cynic and
her mother suffers from sinus headaches. Alexa’s family includes a
physiotherapist, who insists her daughter’s runners be called “gross
motor shoes,” and another sister, a dentist, whose brain and arms
disconnect when she is driving. There is a friend who coerces Annie into
spray-painting subversive political slogans, and Annie’s own family is
not a model for Canadians.

The setting is Calgary in the 1990s. Flashbacks are used to tell the
story but these are not intrusive, and although the main relationships
are lesbian there are no explicit sexual descriptions. The easy writing
style and the humor make this a very readable book.