The people we'd rather not see

[bibliogramma]

We So Seldom Look on Love, Barbara Gowdy

This collection of eight unsettling tales of life at the extremes of human existence, of love and longing and desire and damage, is not easy reading, but it is worthwhile reading. In these stories, the reader will meet people whose lives and circumstances, in lesser hands, would be tales of lurid sensationalism or gushing sentimentality. Instead, we meet these scarred and broken people head on, as real human being, with all their pain and all their potential, however warped by the experiences of living, for despair and desolation, joy and love.

I do not recommend reading all these stories at one sitting, but I do think that there’s a great deal to gain from reading them.

While I don’t often give specific recommendation, I think that anyone who enjoyed Jennifer Pelland’s collection Unwelcome Bodies would also find this volume of interest, and of course, the opposite would be true as well.