Word of Mouth

Claire Wilkshire is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of
British Columbia.

M.A.C. Farrant’s reputation to date rests on her short-story
collections Raw Material and Altered Statements, both of which are
characterized by surrealism, zaniness, and a quirky sense of humor. Word
of Mouth is more serious in tone and content, and exhibits a more
orderly structure: based on a sequence of stories, the book is
essentially two novellas.

The titular heroine, and narrator, of “Sybilla” is a 19-year-old
welfare mother. Initially a lively character, Sybilla wears thin after a
while. Farrant attempts to make her narrator’s voice “authentic”
through the use of conversational and idiomatic speech, but it is a
technique that ends up becoming tiresome and repetitive.

Much more successful is the second novella, “Word of Mouth.” This
tightly focused and sharply written tale of a woman’s relationship
with her family comprises a number of short sections—many less than a
page long—that tell one story from a variety of points of view. The
diversity of voices and perspectives makes for interesting reading.
Although the principal relationship in this moving and evocative story
is that between the woman and her father, the complexities of family
life make themselves felt through a series of other connections: between
the parents, the mother and the daughter, the daughter and her aunt (who
raises her for some years), the aunt and the father. The father is a
navigator, who gives his daughter the confidence she needs to set a
course for herself and to follow it.