Specimen

These stories of science, unfamiliar landscapes, and all-too-familiar heartbreaks are a vehicle for Kovalyova’s bold experimentation with the short fiction form. In “Peptide P,” written in the form of a case study, a scientist notes that “we became alerted to the possibility that so-called parapsychological abilities might account (at least partially) for the resistance to HB disease.” The fictional Heart Break (HB) disease literally breaks down heart cells, but the story allows Kovalyova to explore how one might survive heartbreak, without resorting to standard romantic tropes. The stories build to the longer “The Blood Keeper,” in which Vera Mishkin follows her father to North Korea, falls in love with a colleague there, and plans a bold escape from the country. If many of the stories bear recurrent themes including the loss of a parent, immersion in scientific research, and the life an immigrant, then “The Blood Keeper” wraps those themes into a single vessel and beautifully examines the loneliness wrought by those experiences. Kovalyova is a lecturer in molecular biology at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, and this is a debut collection that successfully and gracefully bridges the divide between the worlds of art and science. [em]Agent: Monica Pacheco, Anne McDermid & Associates. (Apr.) [/em]