So This Is Love: Lollipop and Other Stories

This debut collection (first released in Canada in 2004) examines love's many intricacies and, given the stories that follow, begins fittingly with pain—an amputation performed sans anesthetic. Reid is at his best when his subject matter is dire: two abandoned hospital patients in war-shattered Bosnia—one a vengeful Muslim soldier, the other a blind Serbian woman—come to depend on each other in "Pavilion 24"; a young woman confronts a terrible memory in the tender, sweet and ominous "Soon We Will Be Blind"; a war photographer saves a life in the face of nearly a million deaths in "Hey, Mister!" Throughout, Reid evokes an assortment of settings ("Somewhere the rhythmic crescendo of artillery overtook the roar of the motor. It was subliminal—the distant sound of killing") and shifts easily among a wide array of characters. However, Reid misfires a few times, notably with the half-baked title story and "After the Rain," which reads like an exercise in Hemingway mimicry. But the best of these stories are excellent and illuminate the tortured relationship between love and loss. (July)