Walking to Shenak

Virginia Gillham is university librarian at Wilfrid Laurier University.

This collection of related short stories can best be described as a grim
catalogue of life’s harshest realities. McGrath’s literary craft is
laudable and molds the subject matter into lucid and interesting
vignettes; but the stories profile a segment of life most readers would
prefer not to know. It is hard to imagine a more depressing collection.

The narrator, Sheila, a young teacher escaping a banal lifestyle and a
love affair gone wrong, has come alone to Barker Inlet in the Arctic to
teach school and find adventure. As the unrelenting cold and darkness of
winter close in, Sheila, who remains reasonably detached and analytical
about her own situation, occupies herself by cataloguing the depravity,
depression, and suicides of those around her, describing her environment
as “a routine of work and lonely nights and excessive drinking. A
situation tailor-made for anyone with a tendency to self-destruct.”

As literary art, this collection showcases a capable young Canadian
writer; as a literary statement, it is a sociological red flag and
thought-provoking in the extreme. For these reasons it belongs in
Canadiana collections.