Walking On Water

0/5 ( ratings)

Walking on Water, the latest short story collection from award-winning author Jancis Andrews, searches for the intimate moments of life that reveal the fantastic amongst the mundane. In these ten stories, Andrews swoons through supernatural hallucinations, explores the jutting coasts and heaving mountains of British Columbia, crawls through the communities of poor Vancouverites, and brings to life characters fully imagined with tender care and aplomb. In each story, characters face a turning point in which they are forced to succumb to the suffocating crush, or rise above and walk away, across the water. The opening tale, _Big Girl_ is the story of Betsy, a pubescent teen growing up in the socially stifling 1950s. Barraged by conflicting ideals and virtues from her stringent mother and her voluptuous Marilyn Monroe look-a-like aunt, Betsy comes to understand the price a sexually mature woman sometimes has to pay. In _Balancing,_ destitute mother of two and abused wife, Ann Gallagher, must deal with her inner demons to find a constructive release for the fear and frustration she faces daily at home. The title story centres on the elderly Lucy Gustavson and her depression after being denied an opportunity to sing in front of the Queen. As her frustration overwhelms her, she finds that a quick smile and sense of humour can be a greater gift than any royal sighting ever could be. And in the chilling, autobiographical _Country of Evil,_ Andrews leads the reader through a chaotic night during the London Blitz, the hell the German bombers wrought on single families and close communities, to pose the question of the origin of evil, and if it can be contained within any set borders. In theseshort stories, Jancis Andrews is able to delve into the lives of her characters with direct and unerring writing that also borders on the fantastic, reminiscent of the short fiction of Alice Munro, Carol Windley, and Margaret Atwood.