Sweet Poison

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

This is the third collection of short stories by an author experienced
in the struggle with mental illness, poverty, and injustice. Mothers who
have “breasts like bullets” and don’t believe daughters;
incestuous fathers; necessary psychiatrists, loving and dangerous at the
same time—these are the villains in stories that centre on women’s
experience of a difficult world, a brittle, fragile, “glass” world.

Gibson’s metaphors are remarkable. Buildings stand “like huge
filing cabinets” against Toronto’s skyline; the sweet poison of
sleeping and other pills become Smarties gobbled down in front of a
television set, or “a golden mantra” in the skull of the troubled;
pale colors reflect an artificial society.

Timothy Findley speaks of Gibson’s “deadpan humor and daring
imagery, ... [her] unrelenting willingness to speak the truth.” Such
are the characteristics of strong books. Sweet Poison leaves the reader
breathless.