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Peopling the Wound

• Jan Thornhill (Author)
  Drought and Other Stories. Cormorant Books
• Madeline Sonik (Author)
  Drying the Bones. Nightwood Editions
• Mark Macdonald (Author)
  Home. Arsenal Pulp Press

Reviewed by Stuart Sillars

The opening item in Mark Macdonald’s collection, headed "Contents," is a series of short paragraphs each sketching an item suggesting the person whose identities it has shaped and whose life it records and distorts. This sparse, garage-sale suggestive-ness conveys with an immediate yet imprecise force the displaced world that the volume generates, along axes of both character and narrative. Sometimes, objects dominate lives: the central figure in "Walls" becomes obsessed with protecting […more…]