Canadian Blaise (author of 12 previous books, including Lusts
and If I Were Me
) gathers 13 early short stories, all set in the grim, steaming poverty of north-central Florida in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Autobiographical in inspiration, they reflect Blaise's own childhood as an intelligent child of Canadian parents struggling to make their way in a world of rednecks, migrant workers, tarpaper shacks, swamps and privation. Carefully worded and beautifully constructed, these tales reveal Blaise's talent as a storyteller, as well as his dark view of human nature. In "A Fish Like a Buzzard," two quarrelsome young brothers go fishing on a Florida lake, but only one may come back. In "A North American Education," a father takes his son to a county fair peep show to teach him about sex, but the lesson has unpleasant consequences. "The Fabulous Eddie Brewster," a clever story of clouded family loyalty, suspicion and wartime secrets, is one of the collection's strongest. Entries tell of infidelity, racism and religious intolerance—of a boy's deep and inexplicable admiration for his father, driven by "blind lusts," and a family's business betrayal and their subsequent retreat to escape their failure and humiliation. Though Blaise's volume is a superb example of controlled, elegant writing, readers should not expect to find many moments of humor or happiness. As Johnson notes in his introduction, "an open-ended terror underlies these stories.... [and] the characters never fully comprehend the forces that have been brought to bear upon them." (Oct.)
