Stranger Things Have Happened

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Carmelita McGrath is one of Newfoundland’s leading contemporary
authors. She has written four books, including a poetry collection, To
the New World (1997), which earned her the inaugural Atlantic Poetry
Prize. McGrath’s sympathetic insights into the lives of Newfoundland
women create an interest in her fiction. This latest work is a
collection of short stories.

Despite the book’s uneven quality, McGrath’s publishers praise her
because the book’s “fourteen stories evoke specificity of time and
place.” She also interprets the past. Social history is cleverly used
in the tale “Night Sky Falling.” The narrator, recalling her
small-town childhood, states that “Hildy Ryan says you should go to
confession every time you watch Peyton Place.” The 1960s link
Newfoundland’s traditional Irish Catholic values and North American
culture’s external influences, including an American prime-time soap
opera.

Sex is a vital element of her stories. Since many are set in a stricter
era, the dire consequences of unwanted pregnancy is a recurring theme.
McGrath, unlike island parents and priests, does not necessarily view
intercourse as a sinful catastrophe—loving relationships can also be
found. Fortunately, such positive descriptions of sexual pleasure are
free from her poetic excesses.

The author uses fantasy to animate her social criticism. In “From
Cloud Nine,” an account of a violent marriage, the narrator is the
ascending spirit of a mother who has just been shot in a
murder–suicide. This ghost story has a social conscience.

McGrath guides her readers through unfamiliar territory. She does not
press her advantage, letting others define her place in Newfoundland
literature.