Wild pieces: stories

by Catherine Hogan Safer

One has lost a child and paints her house blue, another has found a not-so-handy man she can’t get rid of; one perches in a tree and observes the neighbourhood, and yet another goes off into the woods with Jesus. These are some of the “wild pieces” that fill Catherine Hogan Safer’s remarkable new book, Wild Pieces – characters as wry and quirky and heart-wrenching as the short stories in which Safer brings them to life.

In language, taut and beautifully controlled, perfectly pitched and witty, Safer creates an array of unforgettable people. She finds the humble beauty in the life of a woman who spends each day knitting unmatched socks in the mall, and the pathos of a man who gathers small pieces of his father’s life. At once very funny and very sad, here is the dignity of lives lived slightly slant.

To enter these stories is to engage the wildness, the deep ache, the possibility of being alive.

Genres: Short Stories

150 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

About the author

Catherine Safer was born and raised in Newfoundland: the Codroy Valley, Gander and St. John's. She has been scribbling since she could hold a pencil and prefers that activity to most things, even gardening. Bishop's Road, her first novel was nominated for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award.

Reviews

[David]

A series of stories that are not typical of anything. They are flashpoints, vignettes, freeze-frames. There is a lot of humor, mixed with some fairly serious situations: "a lamentable tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth" as the subtitle of a 16th-century play went. Most of all, the characters insist on their individuality. Even one characters conformed a stereotypes, they seem to do it in an individual way. Lots of fun, and full of the unexpected.

[Andrew Safer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild Pieces mixes down-and-outers and ne'er do wells with respectable folks, all of whom populate neighbourhoods just like ours, and thrust in our face the local colour that makes life a delightful journey. Each short story is a world unto itself, brimming with whimsy, irreverence, and unpredictability. In one, the iconic historical figure named Jesus drives with Michael into the woods where he is transposed into an ordinary guy. "Michael wanted to bring along his hamster but Jesus didn't think that was such a good idea since the woods were full of crows and owls and they might freak the little guy out, which made sense to Michael when he thought about it." Safer's magical realism, a la Alice Hoffman, stretches you beyond your reference points, and together with her humour, delivers a delightful respite from the predictable and the humdrum.