Real Life
Short Stories
|
On Sale:
|
04/04/2002
|
|
Formats:
Hardback
|
|
|
|
|
In 1985, Sharon Butala’s first collection of short stories, Queen of the Headaches, was nominated for a Governor General’s Award. Her second, Fever, won the 1992 Authors Award for Paperback Fiction and was nominated for a Commonwealth Award. The publication of Real Life, her newest collection, once again shows she is a master of the genre.
Real Life contains ten perfectly formed stories, singular moments of emotional intensity about the inner lives we all share. In “Light,” a woman whose sister is dying an agonizing death from cancer finds a compelling attraction to the stories of Holocaust survivors. In “Real Life,” Raine, a middle-aged divorced woman, runs into her former husband—and the still-sharp pain of an affair that changed the course of their lives. “Keeping House” tells of a daughter’s impending divorce, forcing her mother to re-examine her own abusive first marriage. Each story presents the moments of “real life” that all of us experience, stripping away defenses to reveal truths of pain, joy, anger, fear, or hope.
|
|
|
Author Extras
Reading Guides:
|
|
|
|
The Girl in Saskatoon
In 1961, Alexandra Wiwcharuk was found murdered on the banks of the Saskatchewan River. As Sharon Butala writes, all of Saskatoon “came to a stop,” stunned by the brutal death of an attractive young woman who was a graduate nurse and had been crowned a beauty queen in local pageants. The...
|
|
Lilac Moon
WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a Westerner? What is the Western experience and, by extension, what makes up the Western soul? In Lilac Moon , Sharon Butala inspires, delights and challenges us to think about the West in fresh ways. Beginning with a day in the life of the real West, she transports us to...
|
|
|
|