HOME SCHOOLING

Eight elegant short stories by Canadian novelist Windley (Breathing Underwater, 1998, etc.) plumb the themes of loss, memory and the desire to belong.

Disappointment is the norm for the clear-eyed, quietly intelligent protagonists. In “Home Schooling,” 17-year-old Annabel lives with her family in a desolate abandoned boarding school on a remote Canadian island; her father had been headmaster until a student’s accidental drowning led to the school’s closing. Annabel is sleeping with a college student she’s identified as her “likeliest means of rescue,” but then she learns that he’s in love with her younger sister. “Children’s Games” chronicles the discomfort of a restless young woman who moves into the home of her boyfriend, a single dad, and finds it still filled with the belongings of his ex-wife. In “Felt Skies,” a fledgling copywriter who grew up without a father gets involved with a hard-drinking, much older journalist, to the chagrin of her loving mother. “The Joy of Life” follows Alex as she accompanies her glamorous best friend Désirée to an artist’s retreat in Wales. She winds up babysitting Désirée’s young daughter Loren while mom carries on with a local poet, a fraught situation further complicated by the fact that Alex secretly covets her friend’s husband back at home. Alex isn’t the only character who leaves most of her feelings unaddressed. In the haunting opening piece, “What Saffi Knows,” the eponymous heroine recalls her childhood some 40 years earlier, when she may have been the sole witness to an unspeakable act she could not recognize at the time as a crime. With nary a false or clumsy sentence, Windley demonstrates an effortless understanding of complex human nature that invites obvious comparisons to her gifted compatriot Alice Munro. This slim volume gives every indication that they are warranted.

Beautifully crafted and devoid of sentimentality.