Norma Dunning

A new collection of short stories that illuminate Inuit experience in the Canadian South.

The Unseen Ones, Short Stories

Tainna

Fraser Simons

I can see why this won the Governor General fiction prize. It’s solid. While no story blew me away completely, it was consistently good and depicted Inuit people humanely and sometimes daringly. Handling some pretty heavy subject matter and stereotypes, acknowledging them and then contextualizing them for a story away from the harmful tropes. All while giving them flaws. 

Sometimes the author does not provide a western-centric view, in terms of morally correct, which I liked. One in particular made me think quite a bit before turning to the next story because it’s about two homeless people, I think in Edmonton, and there are certain negative associations that feel pretty diminutive, all because she panhandles and will do sex work in able to buy booze. To forget her past, she says. Which seems like she has trauma. But there are also two spirits, one of which is a grandfather of the man who is ostensibly trying to help the woman by trying to get her to get some food rather than booze with him. But he calls her wife and continually laughs at her when she talks about her ability to call an evil spirit that could really mess up his life. Maybe kill him. And so the grandfather and this spirit are in a kind of conflict and the the two homeless people are as well, of a kind, what with him being offered booze by her and to not go to the food place. It escalates fairly quickly. And at the end, I have to say, I was a bit shocked and it took me a while to unpack the nuances of everything and what the story seemed to be saying. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a short story like that. 

The prose work is what I would call contemporary. It wasn’t descriptive writing and neither did it get in the way of the reading experience. Dialogue feels natural. Character work seems good. Wide range of stories with a wide range of conflicts. And like I said, no story that was outright bad and I skipped; a rare thing. So I consider this to be pretty solid. Better than I expected.

Content warning for pretty graphic, but brief, sexual assault. Misogyny, racism, missing indigenous women. This collection isn’t shy.

Tainna The Unseen Ones, Short Stories

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