One of my absolute favourite books that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reviewing for TMR is Last Hummingbird West of Chile by Nicolas Ruddock. So when Planet Earth, Ruddock’s new collection of short stories came through the TMR inboxes – I leapt up and virtually pushed people out of the way so that I could be the one to read and review it for us. I regret nothing.
Ruddock is a master of the lengthy sentence.
Planet Earth is a wide-ranging collection of stories. Clocking in at 184 pages in total, this is small but mighty: there are pieces of flash fiction here, longer stories, ones that break your heart and ones that chill you to the bone. Ruddock is a master of the lengthy sentence, pulling you along what might otherwise feel convoluted but somehow comes to a meaningful conclusion. “First Girlfriend” — the second story in the collection and just two pages — had me convinced this collection was going to put me through a wringer. There’s complicated joy in these stories, but also complicated sadness.
Ruddock plays with pieces of history in his stories: “Transformation” dramatizes the story of the Discovery and Henry Hudson, again ending with razor-sharp use of language to shake you to the core. “The Luxembourg Gardens,” about a boy who goes on exchange to France and ends up staying alone at his host family’s house, and learns of the political world of protest and resistance well beyond his own understanding of the world, is one of these quiet stories that grows into something much bigger by the end. This is a repeated feeling I had throughout the book: the stories all had something that shifted suddenly and seriously, leading me to reconsider everything I’d read up to that point.
The stories all had something that shifted suddenly and seriously, leading me to reconsider everything I’d read up to that point.
This collection was such a sharp read, with little twists in each story to shatter what you thought you knew up to that point, and full of Ruddock’s curiosity about the world and all of its messy parts. I read this in the dying days of October, and while I wouldn’t say any of the stories are horror, exactly, the dark tones of them and the bleakness in a number of them fit the darkening days of the season. Once again, another excellent work from Ruddock, and sorry to all of my fellow reviewers for pushing them out of the way, but I had to, and I think you now know why.
NICHOLAS RUDDOCK is a writer and physician whose novels, short stories, and poetry for adults have won multiple prizes in Canada, the UK, and Ireland. His novel The Parabolist was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award in 2011. Most recently, in 2023, he has won the Nona Heaslip Prize from Exile Quarterly and been shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Award. He lives in Guelph, Ontario.
Publisher: House of Anansi (November 4, 2025)
Paperback 5.5″ x 7″ | 184 pages
ISBN: 9781487013561
Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
