You Never Know

Patricia Morley is professor emeritus of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University and the author of Margaret Laurence: The Long
Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Isabel Huggan’s stories are gathered from around the world and half a
lifetime of human experience. Wise and knowing, each one explores the
terrain until suddenly the reader sees. And with that seeing comes joy,
pain, and understanding. Why else do we read fiction?

Since 1987, Huggan has lived with her husband and daughter in Kenya,
southern France, and the Philippines. This collection, her second, is
set in Canada, Kenya, Scotland, and France. The narrators are girls and
women.

In “End of the Empire,” a young girl’s fantasy life is contrasted
with her waking life and its daily realities in London, Ontario, in a
lower middle-class family. Imagination makes her the odd one out, yet
offers escape as she fantasizes about living in Buckingham Palace with
the Windsors (until George VI dies) and riding the range with Roy Rogers
and Dale Evans. As she describes herself, “I was a thin, unadventurous
child who preferred fantasy because less than a decade in this world had
convinced me that reality was a punishing and difficult affair.”

“The Violation,” set in a country kitchen, portrays the fearful
imaginings of a young, pregnant farm wife who is alone with a neighbor.
In the end, the “violation” is his tale of his wife’s miscarriages
and their childless marriage: “What right had he to barge in here and
tell me what to hope or not to hope. ... What could I be sure of, after
all?”

“Knowing People,” set partly in a Gaelic area in Scotland’s
Western Isles, recounts a young woman’s coming of age and the
surprises and complexities concealed in each of the characters.

You Never Know marks the maturation of a fine writer who is sensitive
to both language and the human heart.