Pollen

by Tom Abray

With wit and sensitivity, these tales portray moments of suffering, confusion and discovery. Also, the reader is introduced to a wide variety of worlds, worlds that reveal Abray's deep understanding of how people engage with-and become obsessed by-activities such as Japanese kite-making, bees, daycare, alcohol, and motorcycle maintenance. How does the activity reveal the person? How the problem? Abray's stories push full-on into the world of obsessions. A new vacuum cleaner becomes a new pawn in a just-ended relationship. Riding-a-motorbike becomes the way brothers bond over their troubled relationship with their father. A wise naturalist takes the reader on a comic tour of an animal-filled mall, and a bee infestation in a kitchen forces three urban apartment-sharing youths to suddenly confront nature and their own changing relationship. in these stories, Tom Abray shows us how every human activity becomes a for self-revelation, and for relationships that range from romantic to familial.

180 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2011

Reviews

[Veena Gokhale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pollen is an intelligent, humane, subtle and satisfying book. Abray is not just good at his craft; he is wise, and his work enriched me. Though good writers are not so rare, writers who inspire this kind of feeling are. The stories range from vignettes of romantic relationships gone awry, to portraits of family life and siblings having to connect under difficult circumstances. A highly original story is told from the point of view of a very young child and another from what is likely an autistic, young man. When Abray plays with form, he does so with a light touch. And there is slanting humour in some of the stories. My only slight critique is that the emotional restraint, or should one say refinement, that he employs so deftly most of the time, seemed overdone in a couple of places. A lovely first collection overall.

[Zao]

Simple yet powerful stories of varying length. No matter how long a story was (2 pages or 20), I was always fully immersed and lost in these every day people with their every day problems.

[Patricia Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written short stories by a Canadian writer. Only one story left me puzzled because it wandered all over the place and I couldn't understand the plot.