Coming Home to Roost

On the surface, two recent works of fiction present vastly different views of the world, with one, a novel, depicting lives shaped by trauma and the other, a collection of short stories, tracing the fault lines that can run through seemingly ordinary lives. Yet both pose the same question: How do we thrive when our internal lives — our hidden and ongoing griefs, addictions, and pains — persist, despite our best efforts at happiness?

Cordelia Strube, the author of ten previous novels, including Lemon, nominated for the 2010 Giller Prize, and On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light, which won the City of Toronto Book Award in 2016, is known for exploring dark subject matter with a keen sense of comedy. With Misconduct of the Heart, she again balances the light with the dark as she follows characters with diminished capacities to live well — or even to live without chronic fear. With moments of blistering humour, Strube delineates the enduring...