Keeping the Peace (eBook)

Description

If Colette Maitland were a musician, youd say she had perfect pitch.IsabelHugganA soldiers wife struggles to reconnect with her daughter after herhusband is killed overseas. A baby abandoned at the rectory door inflames atownwith gossip. A dog is shot. A heart attack survivor perplexes his familywith a newfound sense of religious euphoria, while a nursing home volunteerstruggles with the bad behaviour of one of her veteran patients.Compassionate, clear-eyed, probing grief and insularity, Colette Maitlandsshortfiction debut shows us the price of keeping the peace in a small town.Praise forKeeping the PeaceColette Maitlandwrites like a dream, with a touch thats compellingly subtlealmost deceptivelyso, since in these stories, dangerlurks around every corner, and trouble isresolved in the most surprising and unsentimental ways. By the end I felt Idexperienceda literary sleight-of-hand. I had to double-check that I wasreading a debut collection and not the latest in a series of Maitlandswiseand lovely books.Charlotte GillHere are the stories you didnt know about the people you do know, and about strangers too, those people you pass on thestreet without giving them a second thought. ColetteMaitlandhas the inside track on the abiding truth that it is our storiesthat make us human, for better or worse. Keeping the Peace is a superb debut collection by a writer to watch.DianeSchoemperlenThese residents of Tim Hortons Nationstruggle with illness, death and depression and hang on as best they can withtrue grit. Raymond Carvermeets Norman Levine on these pages, which herald theappearance of a fine new writer of everyday realism.Antanas SileikaWell rendered, with a wise array of lifelike characters facing moments of personal compromise.The Globe & MailStraightforward realism with a touch of knowing humor.The Milwaukee Journal SentinelTaken together, [Maitlands] sketches of fractured blue-collar homes form something unexpected: a portrait of a communitysubtly rendered, with characters weaving in and out of each others stories almost imperceptibly.Quill & QuireThis fine debut collection of 19 stories are mostly set in small-town Southern Ontario and involve the extraordinary events that mark ordinary lives.The Toronto StarYeats said that a poem comes right with a click like a closing box [and] the metaphor extrapolates well to short fiction endings More often than not, Maitland nails this elusive click a fine execution.The Malahat ReviewMaitlands stories push harder against the edges of reality, focusing on the fraying edges of relationships. The title may beKeeping the Peace, but these stories more often articulate the point at which relationships fragment. There is much anxiety that the peace be kept, that the code be followed, but damnation is inevitable within this mythology. The centre cannot hold.Michael Bryson,The Winnipeg ReviewSmall-town Ontario is a ripe setting for short fiction because, like a good short story, there is a lot going on in a tiny space. The landscape is layered and complicated. InKeeping the Peace, Maitland plays with the texture of everydayness. She sensitively and skillfully explores whats left unsaid to keep the faade intact.The Telegraph-JournalIf Colette Maitland were a musician, youd say she had perfect pitch she writes with enormous empathy about characters whose lives have gone wrong. These stories push us to acknowledge the many flaws and faults that hamper human beings in the search for happinessand then they push us further, into the realm of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness. Isabel HugganThese residents of Tim Hortons Nation struggle with illness, death and depression and hang on as best they can with true grit. Raymond Carver meets Norman Levine on these pages, which herald the appearance of a fine new writer of everyday realism.Antanas SileikaA very accomplished writer.Literary Thunder Bay