Airstream (Trade Paper)

Description

These fourteen stories by acclaimed poet Patricia Young explore the small victories and lurching disappointments, losses and betrayals of the everyday with a language and style that is tautly poetic and beautifully unsentimental. A woman who cannot leave her house loses almost everything, her only companion a garrulous radio talk show host; a house fire sets in motion the end of a marriage as a couple re-examine the meaning of truth and commitment; a teenage girl cannot extract herself from a doomed relationship with a heroin addict. Innocence, and the loss of it, are handled with humour and compassion, and heartbreaking honesty. Young reveals an uncanny ability to see the mysterious in the commonplace.Young brings a poets sensibility to the task, richly developing the inner worlds of her characters and often taking a non-linear approach to her storytelling. Danforth ReviewYoung gives us love and folly and pain and the unending mystery of women and men, boys and girls, with a nuance and balance suggesting Alice Munro, and with echoes of the same wisdom.Globe and Mail