Canoes

De Kerangal’s masterful collection (after Eastbound) examines alienation and grief at pivotal moments in her characters’ lives. In “Bivouac,” a translator reminisces about her first trip to Paris alone as a teen, where she stayed with her mother’s glamorous friend, who lost her fiancé years earlier in a helicopter accident. In the eerie “Nevermore,” a voice actor records Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and encounters a fantastical bird outside the studio. “A Light Bird” centers on a man whose daughter confronts him about needing to delete an answering machine greeting recorded by his now deceased wife. The narrator of “Ontario,” having traveled to Toronto for a literary festival, gazes at Lake Ontario from her hotel window and reflects on how she associates the word “lake” with “death” rather than a more appropriate word like “canoe.” Each story is richly complex, and the collection’s recurring canoe imagery gives it the feel of a treasure map—a dentist wears a canoe pendant in “Bivouac,” and the “Nevermore” narrator’s voice is described as a “light canoe on a dark ocean”—prompting readers to consider de Kerangal’s themes of transience and the flow of memories. This understated volume packs a powerful punch. (Oct.)