February

In February Lisa Moore drives me to distraction with her dialog. No one has conversations. Words are just launching pads to daytime reveries and thoughtful meanderings.

“That'll stain if you don't get at it.”

Helen loved her kids. Maybe John best of all. He was far flung and wide ranging ...and here follows a page and a half recounting of a failed attempt to put together a crib and a story of a dog running in the wet sand.

“Maybe a little water will set it right.”

Another page and a half likely shot through with rich metaphor and deeply layered meaning that I read as a “buying groceries is hard”

I would read the hell out of a Lisa Moore short story. She could write about a mother walking with her son through winter snow. She would capture the way the light hits the snow, flattening the shadows and it would be so damn Canadian I swear I'd be able to hear the Hinterland Who's Who theme.

With an entire book I find myself admiring individual pages beautifully rendered but finding the ending to simply be the absence of additional pages to read.