Canada: Turnstone Press, Oct 2005
ABOUT JACQUELIN HONNET
(Photo: Tomas Kraus)
Jacqueline Honnet was born in East Kilbride, Scotland to a Scottish father and Bahamian mother. She spent her early childhood in the Cayman Islands before moving to Canada. Her short fiction has appeared in literary journals including PRISM international, Event and Room of One's Own. She received an honourable mention for a 2003 National Magazine Award and appears in the fifteenth edition of McClelland & Stewart's The Journey Prize Stories. She lives in Calgary.
stories by Jacqueline Honnet
TRAVELLING FROM THE ISLANDS OF THE BAHAMAS TO THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES TO WESTERN CANADA AND BACK, THESE STORIES MAP THE LIVES AND EMOTIONAL JOURNEYS OF CHARACTERS AT A CROSSROADS — PEOPLE SEARCHING FOR MEANING, BATTLING INDECISION, AND SOMETIMES REACHING AN EXHAUSTED ACCEPTANCE OF THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES
A daughter steals her mother's childhood braids while helping her parents pack for their move back to the Bahamas. A young husband and wife compete for the best funeral story, painting half-remembered scenes of loss in a morbid game. A mother lies about her child's IQ test results, causing her daughter to re-evaluate past and present realities. A new bride in an arranged marriage fears she is being poisoned by her gentle husband. A woman reluctantly pierces her ailing grandmother's ear—a ritual that prepares both women for their inevitable separation.
With quiet, but incisive humour and sharply observed details, these stories resonate with simple but wise observations. Limbo delves into everyday happenings and familiar relationships, magnifying those moments where people find themselves caught between past and present, home and away, obligation and longing.