From Booklist
This collection of Schoemperlen's short stories spans 20 years and showcases the gradual evolution of her inventive style. "Losing Ground," written in 1976, is a nostalgic family chronicle whose characters are so carefully limned the reader quickly knows them. Prophetic dreams run in and out of several stories; parental indiscretions and the conundrums of long-standing affairs are common themes. "Modern men . . . were a bunch of malcontents. They wanted too much or too little, or they wanted somebody else altogether," summarizes one weary narrator. The strength of female friendships winds through the title story, as jewel-like vignettes of the narrator's past experiences with abuse, degradation, abortion, and, finally, hope, each now associated with a piece of clothing, are strung together like beads. Later stories rely more on the narrative tricks for which the author is best known, such as forging a clever parody from a common middle-school word problem. It is as if Schoemperlen has changed to a different camera lens but is still zeroing in on those fragments of everyday lives that so often go unnoticed. Deborah Donovan
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Book Description
Award-winning author Diane Schoemperlen's twenty-one exceptional stories showcase all the magic, charm, and intelligence of her novel Our Lady of the Lost and Found. Written over the past twenty years, and drawing upon a wide range of themes, subjects, and styles, these thoughtful selections are infused with Schoemperlen's freshness of observation and unique gift for narrative. "Losing Ground" is a remarkable coming-of-age story in which the harsh realities of death and discrimination start to impinge on a young girl's life. In "The Man of My Dreams," the truths of a disintegrating relationship counterpose and merge with the dream world of the narrator. And in the title story, items of a woman's clothing carry the memories of past years, illuminating the truths of life-its sorrows, its mysteries, and its consolations.
About the Author
Diane Schoemperlen is the author of Our Lady of the Lost and Found; In the Language of Love; and five short story collections, including Forms of Devotion, which won the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1998; and The Man of My Dreams, which was nominated for a Governor General's Award and a Trillium Award.
Red Plaid Shirt: Stories FROM THE PUBLISHER
Award-winning author Diane Schoemperlen's twenty-one exceptional stories showcase all the magic, charm, and intelligence of her novel Our Lady of the Lost and Found. Written over the past twenty years, and drawing upon a wide range of themes, subjects, and styles, these thoughtful selections are infused with Schoemperlen's freshness of observation and unique gift for narrative. "Losing Ground" is a remarkable coming-of-age story in which the harsh realities of death and discrimination start to impinge on a young girl's life. In "The Man of My Dreams," the truths of a disintegrating relationship counterpose and merge with the dream world of the narrator. And in the title story, items of a woman's clothing carry the memories of past years, illuminating the truths of life-its sorrows, its mysteries, and its consolations.
Author Biography: Diane Schoemperlen is the author of Our Lady of the Lost and Found; In the Language of Love; and five short story collections, including Forms of Devotion, which won the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1998; and The Man of My Dreams, which was nominated for a Governor General's Award and a Trillium Award.
FROM THE CRITICS
The Washington Post
Many of Schoemperlen's stories are experimental in form, and these are often her most moving. In "The Antonyms of Fiction" the narrator approaches the fact of a loved one's death through short sections titled "Fact," "Truth," "Reality," "Non-Fiction," "Poetry" and "Fiction," moving from the bare details of the death through memories of the past to a final, angry acceptance. It is a brief, resonant story that showcases Schoemperlen's greatest attribute: a high-intensity focus on life's most essential moments, defined by its most ordinary details.
— Elizabeth Roca
Kirkus Reviews
Tales both new and previously collected (this is the author's sixth story volume) that are almost universally one part Alice Munro, one part Donald Barthelme. Canadian storywriter and novelist Schoemperlen (Our Lady of the Lost and Found, 2001, etc.) is never satisfied with straightforward character and plot, and more often than not endeavors to undermine traditional strategy with pieces fragmented in one way or another. "This Town" is a portrait of small-town Canada through a point-by-point ("General Information," "Climate," "Population," etc.) tourists' guide. "Hockey Night in Canada" finds the national sport used as an emotional screen for the romantic body-checks of quiet domestic life, while a writer (in "The Man of My Dreams") imagines her life in a sequence of dreams that render its broken nature, its rootedness in the imagination, and the ultimate cloister of existence. In "The Look of the Lightning, the Sound of the Birds," a woman laments the boredom of her life to such an extent that she fixates on local murders and on the carefree life of a friend, but can't tell if she's afraid or angry. And in "Five Small Rooms (A Murder Mystery)," a nonlinear succession of poetic description captures the emotions of a life's trajectory, its odd architectural meander: ". . . the young cephalopod at first lives in the centre of its shell, but as it grows larger, it must move forward, sealing off each chamber behind itself. This would be like shutting a door and having it permanently locked behind you." The 21 stories here cover 20 years' worth of effort (Forms of Devotion, 1998, etc.), and the craft of fiction comes to the fore just as often as does the absurd. Occasionally, you wish for morethan just a gimmick, but just as often, beneath the experimental facade, it's possible to detect something simple and human, even routine. The strategies are a challenge, the themes familiar. In all, smart and imaginative.
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