Night Driving

Janet Money is a writer and policy analyst for the Canadian Cystic
Fibrosis Foundation in Toronto.

Peter Behrens’s first collection of short stories is as dark as the title suggests. He’s an accomplished gloomy mood-setter whose stories are heavy on alienation even as old lovers or friends experience dismal reunions.

In “Wanda” it’s the dead who “come back to cause trouble,” and in “Saltash” a derelict attacks the former lover. A photographer married while away from home on a tour of Europe in “Wedding Trip” — he’s plagued both by a knee injury and by thoughts of a past relationship. You get the idea.

Behrens is capable and convincing each time, but read together the stories are almost indistinguishable, and the result is a bleak trial for the reader.