Hannah Holborn’s short stories, often set in the north or in rural Canada, depict bleak landscapes peopled by the emotionally dispossessed. These characters are, without exception, damaged goods: families ripped apart by alcohol, affairs, resentments, and jealousies. Unmoored children are often left to the care of strangers and foster families. And then there are the disasters: the fires, floods, and plane crashes whose wreckage mirrors the characters’ psyches. Read more…
sense of place
CONSUMPTION
by Kevin Patterson
Kevin Patterson’s first novel (after the bestselling sailing memoir The Water in Between and a prize-winning collection of short stories, Country of Cold) draws on his experiences as a doctor in the far North, painting a poignant and at times achingly grim portrait of a culture whose heart and soul have been steadily eviscerated since its Westernization in the 1950s. Read more…