Echolocation

by Karen Hofmann

Winner of Best Cover Design at the 2020 Alberta Book Publishing Awards!
Third Place in the Prose Category at the 2019 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada!
All Lit Up Book Club Selection
In this provocative collection of short stories, Karen Hofmann creates characters who struggle to connect or disconnect from entanglements and relationships. With ironic accuracy and sensuous imagery, Hofmann considers a range of human a newlywed couple who transform into feral beasts during the hardships of a remote research expedition; backbiting faculty members who strip down during a post-conference BBQ; an heretical nun who explores the possibility of a new life by imaginatively excavating the fossils of BC's Burgess Shale; and an ambitious bylaw officer determined to make her mark on the city's streets. In Echolocation , Karen Hofmann has found new ways to sound the depths of the human heart.

Genres: Short Stories

256 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2019

About the author

Karen Hofmann grew up in the Okanagan Valley, completed a BA and MA at the University of Victoria, and now teaches English and creative writing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. She lives at the edge of a former pine forest with her husband, many children and small animals, and the constant fear that she has forgotten to do something important.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Would put this right at the middle at 2.5 if I could. Not bad, not for me. The writing is fine, but like Lori Moore books (whose work you either like or you don't, and I sadly do not), this is manicured writing—to the point where it is sadly devoid of any individual sense of character or basic emotions. It's a well-written but very cold book, and I found it a struggle to see it through to the end. "Holy, Holy" is far and away the standout story, with the title track following close behind. I'd read those two, honestly, and then see if it's your cup of tea or not.

[Ren · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Echolocation' nails a very particular mood that I really enjoy in short story collections: arid melancholy, written beautifully.

As a fairly recent transplant to BC, I was happy to find a book by a local author that captured this atmosphere so well, strewn with enough local tidbits that you never forget where you are.

The collection opens with one of its stranger, but no less enjoyable, stories, 'Virtue Prudence Courage' which is the only one verging on the supernatural. The others are all about mundane people and mundane restlessness, mostly but not always centered on women. The characters all feel like reminders that each random passerby has a life as vivid and unique as yours, a feeling captured in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as 'sonder'. Each person you read about couldbe you -- they just aren't.

Everyone is on edge in 'Echolocation' for some reason or other, but not in a way that feels pessimistic about the human condition, even if anxiety is the aspect of that condition the author, Karen Hofmann, is focusing on. I always got the impression that every character had a doorway they were searching for that was possible, if difficult, to find. If anything, the throughline was that getting swept along by the tide was what was making everyone anxious and that being an active agent in their own lives would probably alleviate their feelings of malcontentment.

A few standouts were:
- The Birds of India --> a retired nurse joins an old friend on a trip to India to do volunteer work.
- Unbearable Objects --> a husband and wife move in with the wife's family when the two couples fall on hard times of different flavours.
- That Ersatz Thing --> a massage therapist is disgruntled by the uneven power dynamic in an on-again, off-again friendship