Wild Blue Yonder

Thomas ( Intertidal Life ), a former New Yorker, is an award-winning writer in Canada, where she has been living since 1959. This collection of 13 stories, distinguished by superior prose, sparkles with wit and energy. Writing about the things that keep people together and the things that drive them apart, Thomas considers women as daughters, lovers, mothers, solitary and independent spirits, sick or needy worriers. Generosity permeates these pages; the author is fond of her characters, and the reader cannot help but feel the same sympathy. Though men figure significantly throughout the short narratives, the lives of women are the unifying theme. Many of the tales concern couples from differing cultural backgrounds and, while the subtle forces at play in such unions never overwhelm the issues at hand, they are deployed in small and significant moments that brilliantly evoke the closeness and the distance that can occur simultaneously between people. This is a truly satisfying work. (May)