Real Mothers

by Audrey Thomas

In Real Mothers , a collection of short stories, Audrey Thomas journeys to France, Greece and Africa; she also writes about Galiano Island, B.C., where she lived while these stories were taking shape. Real Mothers concerns itself with women who, in one way or another, are mothers; with mothers and daughters; with mothers and husbands―or lovers; and with mothers alone.

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Audrey Grace Thomas, née Callahan, novelist and short story writer (b at Binghamton, NY 17 Nov 1935). Audrey Thomas was educated at Smith College, Mass, and St Andrews University, Scotland, and then taught in England for a year. In 1959 she moved to Canada and in 1963 earned an MA at the University of British Columbia. From 1964 to 1966 she lived in Ghana, but eventually settled on Galiano Island. She has published more than 15 novels and short story collections, more than 20 radio plays, several broadcast on CBC Radio, and numerous travel articles, some of which featured in Air Canada's in-flight magazine.

Thomas' writing has been described as feminine; her forte is the minutiae of women's lives, and she has claimed to strive "to demonstrate the terrible gap between men and women" and "to give women a sense of their bodies." Her style is characterized by word play; she emphasizes puns, etymologies, euphemisms, words within words, and pointing to the inherent possibilities, ironies and ambiguities of language. This close attention to language highlights the act of writing itself, and the possibilities and impossibilities of communication in human relationships. Her writing is also rich with literary allusion, from Shakespeare to Conrad, and from the Bible to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Audrey Thomas is a multi-award winning author. She has been recognized provincially, winning the Ethel Wilson Prize three times (for Intertidal Life, 1985, Wild Blue Yonder, 1991 and Coming Down from Wa, 1996). She has twice been nominated for the Governor General's Award (1984 and 1985), and has been internationally recognized with the Canada-Scotland Writer's Literary fellowship (1984-6) and the Canada-Australia Literary Prize (1989). In 1987 she won the Marian Engel Award, awarded annually to a female Canadian author for her contribution to Canadian literature. In 2003 Audrey Thomas won the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award.

(from http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.co...)

Reviews

[cliolu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the three of the stories

[Clivemichael · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the writing but the theme never really got past early development, these stories just don't go anywhere. Read one or two... then much of the same story for all the rest.