Queen of the Headaches

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Sharon Butala is a strong new Western voice. This collection of her work includes 14 short pieces, many of which have previously appeared, some in slightly altered form, in NeWest, Western People, Grain, and other periodicals. The author demonstrates a powerful understanding of what Thoreau described as “lives of quiet desperation” — ordinary lives, each “extraordinary” in its own way to the discerning eye that cares to observe at close range. Here are people making the small but momentous decisions that shape a life or many lives — facing change, tragedy, and, perhaps hardest of all to endure, facing the essential monotony of the workaday world. It would be no surprise to meet any one of Butala’s characters face to face; we know them already. They are acquaintances, neighbours, friends, even ourselves. A portrait gallery of faces to remember.