Abstract

The short stories in this collection take place in the late 1980s to the early 2000s and are unified by the first person voice of the protagonist, Natalie, a girl growing up in rural southwestern Ontario. The stories deal principally with issues of gender, class, environment, and mortality. Death, a recurring theme, signals psychological and emotional malaise within Natalie's environment and the necessity for her to interrogate her mother's obsolete values about women's roles. Natalie's coming of age is shaped by her and other female characters' experiences of anxiety, shame, and isolation in the deaths of individuals, ideals, and relationships