Rat Medicine: And Other Unlikely Curatives

In her debut collection of 20 short stories, Canadian writer Davis produces a sharp, exploratory mix that goes beyond the margins of kitchen sink realism where her protagonists seem to reside. In such locales as Halifax, Spain and rural Ontario, most of Davis's female characters seem to be either in the midst of a familial crisis or recuperating from one, but Davis's clear focus redeems these domestic trials from the tenor of afternoon talk shows. ""Strays"" is a taut story of a couple wandering through an increasingly alien Spanish landscape, vaguely reminiscent of the Morocco that haunts the Americans in Paul Bowles's stories. Janet, depressed after the death of her twin sister, is traveling with her supportive husband, in search of emotional release. The tale ends when the couple come upon a mute woman foraging in garbage, a scene that proves both cathartic and devastating for Janet. The title story features a plain-speaking Objiway woman named Nell, married to a white farmer, John McBride, who is convinced that his farm is failing because the land is poisoned. One day, Nell spots a rat, and then several of them. These are spirit rats, sent to warn her. Sure enough, John begins getting drunk and beating her. Nell's catharsis is inevitable and satisfying. ""The Poet's Corner"" shucks the theme of family dysfunction to probe the dividing line between madness and vision. On her way to work, a woman named June passes a bum in the subway and recognizes him as a former college classmate, Roddy. This story nicely mixes June's guilty feelings about her fastidiously bourgeois lifestyle with Roddy's authentically poetic, if unstable, mental life. The reader finishes the collection with a sense that while Davis's craft is still maturing, she has a definite sense of symbolic occasions. (May)