Making Light of Tragedy

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British
Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and the
Public, and the editor of “Improved by Cultiv

This is a complex of 23 stories (sketches? reveries? revelations?)
written by a new Newfoundland writer in a kind of randomesque,
surrealistic style that will probably find resonance only with the most
artsy kind of reader. It’s not that jessica Grant is a bad writer, nor
is she devoid of imaginative dexterity; it’s just that the stories
seem to go nowhere very fast. Perhaps there is a generational or
cultural gap at work here that throws me out of sync with her metaphors.
If so, forgive me, but I’m not impressed. In one story the
writer/narrator says, “This is a story about you, reader, who have
passed through many hands, none of which were particularly cruel, but
from which you plotted your escape anyway.” True, too true. And the
best way to escape these hands is to put the book aside and pick up
another that does not presume so consciously on the reader’s patience.