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A review by mizmoffatt
Oxygen by Annabel Lyon
4.0
Annabel Lyon debuted with a forceful, impressive collection of short stories fine-tuned to haunt the quiet hours of the night. Here, we see an experimental form rarely seen in Canadian short prose -- the author teases out complex narratives through compact, often fragmented sections of dialogue/description, allowing her to flicker across timelines and skip between perspectives in a matter of sentences. She whittles her prose to a fine point and is unyielding with her approach.
Highlights of Oxygen include: the dizzying, bittersweet portrait of Suzy and her guardian, Morris, in "Black"; the loneliness and alienation of a young woman, framed through a simple grocery list in "Things"; the terrifying, splintered testimony of three teens in "Song"; and the danger of the stalker-made-familiar in "Run".
Ideal for: Kids who like their Can. lit. shaken, not stirred; Folks with a penchant for literary journals and firecracker prose; Public transit commuters in need of a rough morning jolt.
Highlights of Oxygen include: the dizzying, bittersweet portrait of Suzy and her guardian, Morris, in "Black"; the loneliness and alienation of a young woman, framed through a simple grocery list in "Things"; the terrifying, splintered testimony of three teens in "Song"; and the danger of the stalker-made-familiar in "Run".
Ideal for: Kids who like their Can. lit. shaken, not stirred; Folks with a penchant for literary journals and firecracker prose; Public transit commuters in need of a rough morning jolt.