What Else Is a Heart For?

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

Most of the characters in this collection of seven stories by Ottawa
writer Dayv James-French are misfits who see only what they want to see,
not what is there. Their reality is obscured by illusion.

In “...because,” Phil, an outsider in a new school, builds
relationships with people in his imagination; in reality, he remains
aloof and uninvolved, unable to communicate with others or appreciate
their points of view. In “Cervine” (cervine meaning “of or like a
deer”), Dan is experiencing the first visit of his wife’s
14-year-old son, Joshua. Joshua is an unhappy carnivore; he talks to the
meat before it gets cooked for dinner. Dan and Joshua have few common
interests on which to build a relationship. Even when Dan, who is
draining his swimming pool, jumps up and down in the soaking wet grass,
Joshua does not share the childish fun. Not until a moose becomes
trapped in the almost empty pool do Dan and Joshua communicate.

The characters in the other five stories are just as absorbed in their
own worlds as Joshua and Phil. Aside from the detachment of the
characters, James-French’s stories are notable for their humor and
strong sense of period, especially of the 1960s.