Myth, Metaphor and Politics

Although Cynthia Flood’s new collection of short stories, Red Girl Rat Boy, demonstrates her attention to the art of fiction much more than to politics, the recent grumbles of electoral campaigning in the east-central Canadian news turned my attention to her characters marked by political signs: social workers, pacifists, feminists. Flood knows the signs well, having been involved in leftist activities since the 1970s, when she began her writing career in earnest—later gaining accolades for books such as My Father Took a Cake to France. Her father, the historian Donald Creighton, leaned more to the right for most of his life and was outspoken in his politics. In contrast, Flood’s politically marked characters in Red Girl Rat Boy say little about their views aloud, or in their heads where readers can hear them. Instead, their actions do the work of characterization and politicking, as they were done in fantasy and myth in...