Boundaries and Other Fictions

Virginia Gillham is university librarian at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Boundaries and Other Fictions combines works that could legitimately be
described as short stories with much shorter pieces that are the
reflective verbalization of nightmares or thought processes or the
subconscious. None of these pieces could be described as a relaxing
bedtime read. The commonalities running through them are tension, shock
value, and descriptions of happenings that disgust or horrify. The
reader is moved to contemplate the mind of the author, an individual
obviously broadly knowledgeable and impressively intellectual. His
writings are like icebergs; the theme or message, which is nine-tenths
below the surface, is implied, unstated—the undercurrent to the spare
and deceptively simple surface story line.

There is a temptation to describe the central characters in these
pieces as larger than life. But a second look makes it clear they are
simply characterizations of life that we all recognize but seldom
articulate.

Boundaries and Other Fictions is a deep and fascinating addition to the
body of Canadian literature.