This Side of Bonkers

Linda M. Bayley is a freelance writer based in Sudbury, Ontario. She is
the author of Estrangement: Poems.

Laura Cutler has a great knack for conveying her understanding of women
and the world. There is so much emotional truth in This Side of Bonkers
that I wondered while reading it whether Cutler had somehow been
eavesdropping on my life and those of my female friends. While her women
may find themselves in situations I’ll never encounter (or hope I
never will), their emotions, actions, and reactions are so real that
reading their stories made me feel like I knew what I would do and how I
would feel if I were in their place.

This is a book about change, uneasy change. One woman waits up for her
teenage daughter to come home, another long night in an ever-growing
conflict of expectations and wills. A bookish girl declares her
independence from the Tuna Fish Trio, those popular girls who delight in
tormenting her, even though she wishes she could just fit in. The
dominant, breadwinning half of a lesbian couple suddenly finds her role
reversed when she asks her partner to leave, never anticipating the
other woman’s unusual responses. And in “The Essence of Miss
Chowdhury,” the most heartbreaking story of the collection, a
schoolgirl’s naive pursuit of her exotic Indian teacher leads to all
manner of suffering for the older woman, including the loss of her job
and family and her eventual disfigurement.

This Side of Bonkers is a satisfying read, sometimes unsettling,
sometimes hugely funny. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know what
women are really thinking about.