- Paperback: 234 pages
- Publisher: Raincoast Books (Aug 19 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1551925664
- ISBN-13: 978-1551925660
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13.7 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,421,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Amazon.ca
Genni Gunn's background as a musician serves her well in Hungers, her first short story collection. Some of the shorter pieces, such as "Fugue" and "Rondeau," borrow musical structures. Others focus on characters who communicate through music, such as the brother and sister in "Measures": "Music, indispensable, necessary, no matter how much he denies it," thinks Eve at one point about her guitarist brother Brian. Gunn, whose previous books include the novel Tracing Iris, is not a great short story writer, but she's a good one, and occasionally she gets it just right. In "Public Relations" she ties together several themes, including father-daughter relations, communication (or lack of it), alienation, and passionless sex, and wraps them up with a neat little twist. In the opening story, "Desperadoes," a married couple attempting to reconnect with happier times by revisiting a vacation spot run instead into a malevolent general, while "Sailing" is a brief but effective character sketch of a voyeuristic 55-year-old behavioural psychology professor.
Not all of Gunn's attempts at experimental structure work, and "Models," with its three sketchy vignettes (how did the husband in the second part, "How to Behave," die?), feels more like a creative writing exercise than a story. Much more impressive is the novella-length title story, which contains a family Christmas dinner from hell that is the book's best scene. As long-held grudges and secrets spill out, Gunn's pitch--sustained between maximum tension and humour--is near perfect:
"Jesus, you're a liar," Marcia says viciously. "Or a selective amnesiac." She stares at me a moment. "I bet you still have the scars. They say hair never comes back after a burn." "Anybody want a drink?" Dad says in his terribly bright voice.--Shawn Conner
The Globe & Mail, November 16, 2002
Gunn's wonderfully quirky and rigorous imagination, her unquenchable curiosity, her poet-passion for the plasticity of language...are alive and kicking.
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