Canadian Short Stories, connected, set in differently-coloured rooms in a house, mid-90s, female author.

[Simone]

Help! I have a friend looking for a book she owned and loved a long time ago (she lent it out and never got it back), and she only remembers a few details. I’m stumped. Do any of you voracious readers know what it might be? Here are the clues:

1. A book of related short stories. Each story is about a room in a house. Each room is painted a different colour. New Year’s was celebrated in the purple room.
2. The author is a woman.
3. It was published ca 1994-96.
4. It was recommended on the CBC, probably by Shelagh Rogers on Morningside. Maybe.
5. It was either in the running for an award or won an award. Maybe.
6. The book itself was short, a squarish rectangle with a purply cover and a black-and-white etching of a seahorse in a little square in the middle.

If anyone has any idea what this book might be, please let me know! My friend would be thrilled to be able to find it again.

[Kris]

Simone, what is the genre or tone of these stories?

Any chance there's a reference to Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death in which "He, along with many other wealthy nobles, hosts a masquerade ball in seven rooms of the abbey, each decorated with a different color."?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mas...

[Simone]

Sadly, not having read the stories myself, I’m not sure if any of them reference Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. I know they are fictional short stories written by a Canadian woman sometime in the mid-90s, and that they interconnect, and that the New Year is celebrated in a purple room in one of the stories. And I have that description of the cover. I’m pretty sure the stories aren’t science fiction or fantasy, but straight-ahead standard fiction.

I realise that this might simply not be enough to go on, but it’s what I’ve got.

Thanks for taking a crack at it, Kris!

[Kris]

You're welcome. Are the short stories by a single or multiple authors?

I'd suggest scanning the search results on Worldcat.org. For example:

Search using WorldCat.org:
https://www.worldcat.org/advancedsear... > Keyword: canada | Subject: short stories | 1994-1996 ? | Not juvenile | Fiction | Book | English

[Simone]

The stories are written by just one author. A woman. Canadian. I’ll give the Worldcat site a try, thanks for the suggestion!