Driving Men Mad

Claire Wilkshire is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of
British Columbia.

Elise Levine’s first collection of short stories is a fast-paced and
hard-hitting book. The varied characters and situations described in
these 17 stories demonstrate Levine’s versatility. There’s Bobbie,
forced to retire from the cosmetics counter at Eaton’s because of her
psoriasis; the young woman who escapes Owen Sound for drugs,
nipple-piercing, and joyriding in the big city with her lesbian lover;
Jamie, a boy whose mother cooks chips in the back of a truck in one town
after another; the bully, brain-skewed by flying in Malta, who takes it
out on his wife and kids and obsesses about aircraft; and an equally odd
assortment of others.

The most striking feature of Levine’s writing is its tightrope
tautness—not a line, not a word in this book calls out to be cut. The
diction is precise and the vocabulary extensive; one has the impression
that Levine knows exactly what she wants to say and knows exactly the
language that will best suit her purpose. Driving Men Mad is an
impressive collection.