From Amazon
Shaena Lambert's short story collection,
The Falling Woman, is an auspicious debut from a bright new talent, with prose that drills through surface layers to the essence of her characters. In "Annunciation," a story that travels deep into the psyche of a beautiful young woman, Lambert writes, "She saw herself as something flagrant and damaging--a mark or blessing for which she had been unprepared." "Sugar Bush" finds Melanie, an insecure actress, confessing to herself, "I make a mistake with people I admire: I splash in, too fast, then something inside me swells with need. Perhaps this swollen part gives off an offensive odor of desire and deprivation." And "Bare Breasted Woman" describes a mother's struggle to keep the peace between her strong-willed daughter and stubborn husband: "When the chasm was unbreachable, when nothing could heal it and nothing could be done, it was at this point that her mother always rushed in to cover up the monstrous gulf with a blanket of familial love." This tiny volume is bursting with passages like these. Prepare to be challenged by Lambert: her characters are complex and their actions aren't always predictable. Her expressive, emotionally exact language, though, makes even the most erratic behaviour of her falling women believable.
--Moe Berg
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Review
'The muse is plying her work in these stories; that, or perhaps the living spirits of Alice Munro and Annie Proulx .. [Shaena Lambert] has the potential to rival them both' The Globe and Mail
