Small Change

Martha Wilson is Canadian correspondent for the Japan Times (Tokyo) and
a Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

“I am always suspicious but never at the right time,” Elizabeth
Hay’s narrator confides with characteristic honesty and prickliness.
Hay knows the dirt roads of the heart like her own back yard. “You are
cheap in emotional ways too. If you were generous you would enjoy Carol
for who she is. Instead, mean piece of Scottish shit that you are, you
weigh the number of times she has called, the way people weigh out food
in times of scarcity.” The “you” in this scathing insight refers
to Beth, who narrates the book’s first-person stories and is the
subject of the third-person pieces.

These stories focus on friendships, on the intimacy and need and anger
they generate. Most remarkable is Hay’s wholly original voice, which
fluctuates between civility and unexpected eruptions of fury. The
characters can be hard to keep straight from one story to another, but
this is a minor quibble.