The Book of Ifs and Buts

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish Studies at Laurentian
University.

Philip Effroo, one of the protagonists of the story that gives this
collection its name, tells his hectoring editor that his stories “are
little slices of life, sir. They are funny and sad and poignant. They
are more than they appear to be.” The same could be said of the nine
stories in Rabindranath Maharaj’s second collection.

Maharaj’s protagonists struggle with the loneliness, alienation,
homesickness, confusion, discrimination, and disassociation that are so
universal to the immigrant experience. Some of those experiences border
on the surreal. Effroo, for example, finds his life and apartment
suddenly taken over by a professor of 19th-century literature who
insists that he had been deconstructed out of his tenure by the CIA. In
“The Diary of a Down-Courage Domestic,” the absurdity of strange
Canadian attitudes, rules, and behaviour is met with common sense,
warmth, and good humour.

Throughout, the author’s wit and sense of the comedic surprises us
into laughter when we least expect it. The Book of Ifs and Buts is an
excellent read, and Maharaj is a writer to watch.