Sylvie: Short Story

by Barbara Gowdy

On Sylvie’s first day of school, her mother advises her to keep Sue, an undeveloped Siamese twin, hidden under her skirt. Teased, groped and tormented by the other kids, Sylvia eventually makes her escape with a sideshow that visits her hometown. At last, she has found a place where she feels at home—until life offers her the opportunity to walk in yet another direction.

Hailed as “remarkable and uplifting” by The Globe and Mail and published to equally glowing acclaim around the world, Barbara Gowdy’s groundbreaking collection of stories, We So Seldom Look on Love, pushes past the limits of convention into lives that are fantastic and heartbreakingly real.

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Genres: Short Stories

35 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 4, 2012

About the author

Barbara Gowdy is the author of seven books, including Helpless, The Romantic, The White Bone, Mister Sandman, We So Seldom Look on Love and Falling Angels, all of which have met with widespread international acclaim. A three-time finalist for The Governor General’s Award, two-time finalist for The Scotia Bank Giller Prize, The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, winner of the Marian Engel Award and The Trillium Book Prize, Gowdy has been longlisted for The Man Booker Prize. She has been called “a miraculous writer” by the Chicago Tribune, and in 2005 Harper’s magazine described her as a “terrific literary realist” who has “refused to subscribe to worn-out techniques and storytelling methods.” Born in Windsor, Ontario, she lives in Toronto.