Paradise and Elsewhere, by Kathy Page, Biblioasis, 160 pages, $18.95
In one of Paradise and Elsewhere’s later stories a woman looks through a window of wartime glass “faulted so that the whole world seem[ed] drunken-strange.” The view through the warped and bubbled pane is an apt description for how these stories work: In each we think we know where we are, only to encounter a pop or shift. The intensely familiar and the strikingly odd combine here to form a reading experience similar to that of fable. Indeed, though Paradise is set in modern times, here we cover similar ground as that of Greek myth or Grimm’s fairy tales: the invention of birth and death, transformations from one species to another, children potentially eaten, the problem of what to do with travellers and other outsiders. Providing too much detail would spoil the fun, but rest assured these contemporary tales are as insightful as their older counterparts.