Book Reviews

This charming slice of life from autobiographical writer Ted Olinger, set in Washington State’s Key Peninsula at the bottom of Puget Sound, is truly flavorful. Beautifully illustrated with scrawly ink blot style drawings from whimsily-named local artist Tweed Meyer, Ted Olinger has managed something rare and magical – to capture not only his own life in miniature, but that of the environment around him, in rich, deep language and poetic writing conjuring up the wilderness prose of Laurie Lee and Jon Krakauer – ten short stories like windows into Olinger’s life as he settles into Peninsula life with his young […]

This small collection consists of six very short stories and a novella. The stories are linked by theme: death, madness, forgiveness, love. It’s primal stuff, and Donnelly handles his material gently, almost reverently. The first six stories are very short, very lean, almost ghost-like. And indeed the quiet dead figure largely in these stories, as do the unhappy and angry living. However, not much is resolved, or even really explored, in these first few stories. They are almost like snapshots or sketches of people trying unsuccessfully to reach out and connect with one another, whether across a table in a […]