A WAY TO BE HAPPY

Stories by an accomplished Canadian writer about the complexity of loneliness and the sweet relief of connection.

In “Homing,” 62-year-old Marta leaves her husband, which is a “non-event” until she realizes how lonely she is, living in a new town and making feeble attempts to befriend her neighbors. Her despair starts to lighten when a flock of pigeons roosts in her shed; figuring out what’s brought them to her rental house forces her out of her shell. Taryn in “All Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone” is adrift, a homeless addict. As she and a man who has promised to take her away—perhaps to recover—go from one fancy party to another on New Year’s Eve and steal from the guests, it would be easy to judge Taryn, except that the story swerves in a small, unexpected way. Adderson has a gift for finding the tender parts in characters, even unlikable ones. At 55, Ketman, the misanthropic grump in “The Procedure,” misses his late mother so much that he actually imagines she’s waiting just around the next corner of his colon, which he’s watching on screen during his colonoscopy. The best story here is “From the Archives of the Hospital for the Insane,” a piece about the power of women to care for each other, even under difficult circumstances. Drawing from research on British Columbia’s Provincial Hospital for the Insane in the early 20th century, Adderson teases out the social-historical reasons for women’s “insanity” as well as why some women might prefer to live in an institution rather than out in the world. Adderson, best known in the U.S. for her children’s books, is a deft, masterful storyteller whose literary fiction surely deserves more attention.

Confidently written stories by an author whose light touch suggests human pathos without pinning it down.