What's Left Us

Susan Patrick is a librarian at Ryerson University in Toronto.

What’s Left Us in an interestingly ambiguous title (what has left us
or what is left us?) for this collection of short stories and a novella.
In the novella of that name, a second-generation fatherless single
mother-to-be is searching for her roots, the impending birth leading her
to attempt to reconstruct a family history for her son. What’s left
could refer either to what has departed or what remains. The fathers
have left the mother and child, but the history of the family, once
discovered, has been left to them like a legacy, and the baby will leave
the womb but remain with the mother.

In other stories, what’s left could refer to dead/dying family
members, a miscarriage, the departure of love, or the feelings that
remain in the aftermath of these events. Many of the stories are set in
Dublin, with much local color (tea at Bewley’s, walks down O’Connell
Street), a strong sense of the Irish character in all its ambiguity, and
a wry/black sense of humor (a “things to do list” of a woman in
Dublin includes “throw self in Liffey”). In fact, there is a
recurring theme of drowning, both attempted and actual, running
throughout the book, and the symbolism of water is particularly strong
in the novella.

Hunter often adopts an ironic detached tone, employing unusual
metaphors and repetitions of word and phrases, and addressing the reader
directly or writing in the second person. The first story,
“Hagiography,” is recounted by a narrator on one level and
deconstructed on another—a small slice of life, with the ending cut
short. At the end of many of these stories (often involving chance
encounters, leading to love, or not), the reader may well turn the page,
wondering what happens next.

Interesting characters and situations, combined with a style that
provokes awareness in the reader, make for stimulating reading.