Way Up

Lori A. Dunn is an ESL teacher, instructional designer, and freelance
writer in New Westminster.

Kuitenbrouwer’s collection of short stories is brilliantly varied:
each turning of the page brings with it another surprise, another
complex relationship. A story about a piece of land and its ghost
meeting the new resident follows one about an ex-boyfriend and
girlfriend on a mind-bending road trip to meet the Friendly Giant. A
tale of childhood friends meeting sainthood comes after one of a father
and daughter reliving history on the prairie.

No way exists to categorize these stories in a facile summation:
Kuitenbrouwer writes stories about people’s tragedies and
celebrations, essentially life in all of its bittersweet glorious mess
of passions. And each story encompasses a different point of view: she
writes as a man, as a woman, and as a child; she speaks from age and
from youth; and she shares the perspective of both the educated and
those who are not. Way Up is masterful fiction that encapsulates much of
the human, and Canadian, identity.