Fables of Brunswick Avenue

Katherine Govier has published two novels, and now this is her first collection of short stories. A number of these stories have appeared in print previously, some in magazines and others in anthologies of Canadian short stories. What unites these stories is that they are about people who have shared a particular experience, people who at some stage in their lives have lived in a trendy but cheap urban neighborhood like Toronto’s Brunswick Avenue. During the period of Govier’s stories, Brunswick Avenue was a street of rooming houses and cheap apartments. It still retains this atmosphere in some sections, although it has become much more expensive and chic. Govier’s Brunswick Avenue of the ‘60s and ‘70s is the haunt of artists, students, and people moving to the city to begin a new life — a street of Bohemians acquiring a new sophistication.

The 16 stories in this collection trace the lives of these neophyte sophisticates backward to look at their often provincial origins, and forward to look at what has become of them. The scenarios, usually conveyed from a woman’s point of view, will be familiar to those who have lived in such a world: the trip to Europe with a friend, the prenatal class, the ambitious young woman university professor, the trauma of divorce. They are interesting, well-written stories, which ponder current sociological and literary subjects, providing a look at Canadian culture from a particular perspective — that of the young hopefuls of the past decade. Many readers will read the stories with self-recognition, seeing past and present selves in the characters and their experiences. Katherine Govier is an assured and skillful writer whose work provides significant cultural commentary. She deserves to be widely read.