Inspection of a Small Village

Louise E. Allin, a poet and short-story writer, is also an English instructor at Cambrian College.

The stories in this collection express multiple points of view as they
roam the map from Saskatchewan to Paris to Italy to the hills of
England. Connie Gault’s prose has the lilt and drift of poetry. Her
characters command attention as they sleepwalk through life, stopping
only when they recognize the absurdity of their situation. In one story,
a man “following his hand” intrudes upon a garden party barbecue. In
another, a Chekhovian medical health officer wanders through a small
village, taking in the eccentrics with aplomb; years later a woman
haunted by his visits seeks out his notes in an archive. In another
gently humorous tale, cowled monks shuffle at the invasion of female
laypeople who are studying at their abbey.

Often the reader must fill in details or trace chronologies and
relationships—for example, in “A Burning House” and “My Star
Crossed Eyes”— but in the end the picture fits together like a
satisfying jigsaw. “Carlyle’s House” is a particularly brilliant
story; its narrator is a menopausal volunteer caretaker who assumes the
identifies of the historical personas who linger in the house.