In the Telling

There is a bend in Galt, Ontario, that I think of as Olive Kitteridge Corner. As I turn the wheel of my car, I’m always reminded of the moment in Elizabeth Strout’s novel when Olive steals a shoe from her miserable daughter-in-law’s closet, knowing that the search for the misplaced loafer will drive the woman mad. Along this same route, about three kilometres south, another stretch of road along the Grand River is forever riveted in my memory to the first line in Carrianne Leung’s linked story collection, That Time I Loved You, which opens during “the year the parents in my neighbourhood began killing themselves.”

Leung’s book is set in the new suburbs of Scarborough, in 1979, while Strout’s plays out in the fictional town of Crosby, Maine — both vastly different settings from Galt, which is a turn-of-the-century factory town. What connected these disparate landscapes was my ­commute in early 2020. Once a week, I would drive between my home and Wilfrid...