Peninsula Sinking by David Huebert

(The following review is reproduced in part by the kind permission of Naomi MacKinnon of the Consumed by Ink book review blog. – James)

Look at the cover of this book. It couldn’t be more stunning. With stories to match. Peninsula Sinking is David Huebert‘s first short story collection. He has won the CBC Short Story Prize, the Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize, and the Walrus Poetry Prize, and is the author of one poetry collection We Are No Longer the Smart Kids in Class (which I haven’t read).

David Huebert’s stories are some of the best I’ve read. Here is a taste of all eight of them…

Enigma

I read Enigma when David Huebert won the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize with this story. It’s about the grief of losing a beloved animal. What I love about this story is how well the reader is able to feel the woman’s attachment to her horse and the very real grief she feels. Huebert explains in an interview with CBC that it even comes between the woman and her boyfriend: “What I really wanted to capture was a couple in love who come across this moment where their empathy cannot do its work — where empathy is basically unachievable. And grief often does that.”

The other thing I love about this story, and most of his others, is that animals are included as integral characters. As Alexander MacLeod says on the back of the book, “This book is Noah’s freaking ark. All of life, animal and human, is intimately crammed insude of it and the whole vessel has been expertly designed to stand the surrounding storm.”

Read the reast of this review: Peninsula Sinking by David Huebert — Consumed by Ink

Peninsula Sinking by David Huebert
Biblioasis

Naomi MacKinnon

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Naomi MacKinnon is a mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, pet-lover, reader, walker, camper, and Nova Scotian. Naomi has contributed several guest reviews over the years to The Miramichi Reader. Her book review blog is Consumed By Ink.