Sometimes you read a book by a new writer and you make a mental note: Whoooa, better watch this one. That’s how I felt a decade ago when I read Traplines, Eden Robinson’s first book of short stories. Maybe it was something about her distinct voice, her muscular prose, her slightly skewed but no-nonsense characters, but the collection got my attention.
And sometimes your hunches are valid. The New York Times named Traplines one of 1996’s notable books; the collection also won the Winifred Holtby Prize as best first work of fiction by a Commonwealth writer.
When Monkey Beach came along in 2000, I was disappointed it did not garner the Giller Prize and glad to see it net the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. (Wilson would have been a little startled by Robinson’s authorial audacity, but would have applauded her feisty good humour and that she set her fiction in British Columbia, not some far-off generic place usable by...
Lynne Van Luven is the editor of the anthology Nobody’s Mother: Life Without Kids (Touchwood, 2006). She teaches at the University of Victoria.
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