The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

The first edition of The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in
English was published in 1986 with 41 stories. This edition has 47, and
there are new stories by 16 of the first-edition writers, including
Margaret Atwood, Marian Engel, Timothy Findley, Mavis Gallant, and Alice
Munro. Contributors new to the anthology include Carol Shields, Neil
Bissoondath, Cynthia Flood, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Alistair MacLeod,
Rohinton Mistry, Diane Schomperlen, and Linda Svendsen.

Atwood’s introduction refers to the “astonishing” recent
proliferation of short fiction in English in Canada, and denies that the
collection represents a canon of any sort. She feels she need no longer
keep tabs on the number of women writers included: “The women are
simply there. They write. They write well. No one, any longer, finds
this freakish or surprising.”

Canadian Short Stories is a substantial volume, but no one is likely to
feel that it is too long. Bite-sized treasures will fill many a winter
evening and summer afternoon. This anthology should be in every
English-language library in Canada and abroad.