On the Road

Lori A. Dunn is an ESL teacher and editor of the Toronto women’s
magazine Feminie.

This collection of short stories is a refreshingly cynical look at the
“private lies and public performances” of a musician on the road
with a myriad assortment of different bands. Her relationships with
other band members, her roommates, and her lovers are insightful. Her
awareness of her social training has a self-consciousness that will
strike a chord of recognition in the heart of any woman. In every
relationship there is always the “inevitable epiphany of
self-preservation,” and for our heroine, this moment often comes
nearly too late. But as the list of failed relationships grows, her
search for musical and emotional fulfillment continues, despite, or in
spite of, the social pressures around her to conform, and the continual
danger of the “hysterical desire” characterizing her loneliness.

Gunn has created an enjoyable character whose cynicism educates, and
whose perseverance inspires.