Pool-Hopping and Other Stories

Susan Patrick is a librarian at Ryerson Polytechnical University.

In this collection of short stories, Anne Fleming has created diverse
and interesting characters, but ones who seem to be, or feel themselves
to be, on the outside: an albino child taken to show and tell by her
sister; an overweight girl sensitive about her appearance; a balding
teenage boy whose amorous dreams are spoiled; a gay teenage girl who
experiences a first love found and lost; an elderly woman who refuses to
have her past, private life “outed” by her great-niece; a man who,
incognito, attends the wake of a stranger he has killed in a car crash;
and a woman alone with her memories of a brother who has just committed
suicide.

There is a wistful quality to these stories, a sense of disappointment
and hopes dashed. Fleming writes convincingly of the difficulties of
family and intimate relationships, and the cruelties of childhood and
children, though she also displays a wry and insightful sense of humor,
particularly at human foibles. The strength of these stories lies in her
drawing of the characters, for whom the reader comes to care about in
only a few pages.