Recent reads

The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie, by Sandra Sabatini. This collection of short stories by a Canadian author was recommended to me by Fiend, and I find that the two stories she particularly mentioned – the first and last ones in the book – are the ones that stick in my mind also.

The first, the title story of the collection, relates the thoughts of a young girl who eagerly anticipates a school trip to Marineland, an aquatic-life theme park that features performing dolphins. She’s also approaching adulthood in an environment that bodes ill for the expectations of childhood, and Sabatini effectively plays off the parallels between the two. The last story, “Maternal Instinct”, seems more muddled. The story of a suburban couple’s attempts to get rid of an unwelcome pair of nesting raccoons – and of the tragic outcome – is interspersed with a running account of the troubles encountered by the wife and the children at school and at home. Logic would suggest that Sabatini intends for there to be a link or parallel between the two, but it eluded me.

Many of the other stories, mostly set in rural Ontario’s cottage country, deal with the problems that beset children on the verge of adolescence, particularly teenage girls whose developing sexuality puts them in situations that they are not prepared to deal with. Sabatini has a brisk but emotive writing style that puts the reader inside the heads of her (mostly) adolescent protagonists. Her stories are best enjoyed, I think, in single doses. Her writing style is enjoyable, but reading a half dozen of these stories at once tends to emphasize the degree to which she frequently dwells on similar themes.