What do you think?
Rate this book
Wallflowers
Shortlisted for the 2016 Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award
From windswept Pacific beaches to the inner reaches of the human heart, Wallflower is a shimmering and often surprising journey of discovery, with many unexpected turns along the way. Robertson has created a cast of unique and wholly engaging characters. Here there are swindlers and innocents, unlikely heroes and gritty survivors; they teach us how to trap humming birds, relinquish dreams gracefully, and feed raccoons without getting bitten. “Wish you were here” letters on a road trip parallel a woman’s painful trip into her family’s dysfunctional past; reminiscences of a beloved sibling are inextricably bound up with calamity … and roommate problems lead to a surprising (and skin-crawling) revelation. Robertson smashes stereotypes even as she shows us remarkable new ways of experiencing the world—and of relating to our fellow human beings. Quirky and masterful, Wallflowers is a bouquet of unconventional delights from a powerful new voice.
From windswept Pacific beaches to the inner reaches of the human heart, Wallflower is a shimmering and often surprising journey of discovery, with many unexpected turns along the way. Robertson has created a cast of unique and wholly engaging characters. Here there are swindlers and innocents, unlikely heroes and gritty survivors; they teach us how to trap humming birds, relinquish dreams gracefully, and feed raccoons without getting bitten. “Wish you were here” letters on a road trip parallel a woman’s painful trip into her family’s dysfunctional past; reminiscences of a beloved sibling are inextricably bound up with calamity … and roommate problems lead to a surprising (and skin-crawling) revelation. Robertson smashes stereotypes even as she shows us remarkable new ways of experiencing the world—and of relating to our fellow human beings. Quirky and masterful, Wallflowers is a bouquet of unconventional delights from a powerful new voice.
304 pages, Paperback
First published August 19, 2014
23 people are currently reading
513 people want to read
About the author
Eliza Robertson
11 books64 followersImage by Leanne Dunic
Eliza Robertson's 2014 debut collection, Wallflowers, was shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Award, the Danuta Gleed Short Story Prize, and selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Demi-Gods, was a Globe & Mail and National Post book of the year and the winner of the 2018 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the University of East Anglia, where she received the Man Booker Scholarship and Curtis Brown Prize. In addition to being shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and Journey Prize, Eliza’s stories have won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and 2017 Elizabeth Jolley Prize.
Originally from Vancouver Island, Eliza lives in Montreal.
Eliza Robertson's 2014 debut collection, Wallflowers, was shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Award, the Danuta Gleed Short Story Prize, and selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Demi-Gods, was a Globe & Mail and National Post book of the year and the winner of the 2018 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the University of East Anglia, where she received the Man Booker Scholarship and Curtis Brown Prize. In addition to being shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and Journey Prize, Eliza’s stories have won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and 2017 Elizabeth Jolley Prize.
Originally from Vancouver Island, Eliza lives in Montreal.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
January 20, 2015
A debut collection of 17 virtuosic short stories from a 27-year-old Canadian. Themes of moving on from loss and finding love amidst gentle madness play out over images of the natural world. I might have preferred a more focused collection of the 10 best stories (at just over 300 pages, this is a bit long), but the breadth does mean that every reader should find something to like. There’s an even mix of first- and third-person perspectives, and the settings and scenarios are diverse enough that you never feel you’ve read the same story twice.
Robertson’s language is always fresh, as in “Her giggles rise into the banana leaves like bubbles inside a glass bottle of Fanta” and “the moon is sickled enough to hang a coat.” She is currently at work on her first novel, while completing a PhD at East Anglia. I’ll be keen to read what she comes out with next.
Three favorite stories: “Worried Woman’s Guide,” “Roadnotes,” and “L’Étranger.”
See my full review at The Bookbag.
Robertson’s language is always fresh, as in “Her giggles rise into the banana leaves like bubbles inside a glass bottle of Fanta” and “the moon is sickled enough to hang a coat.” She is currently at work on her first novel, while completing a PhD at East Anglia. I’ll be keen to read what she comes out with next.
Three favorite stories: “Worried Woman’s Guide,” “Roadnotes,” and “L’Étranger.”
See my full review at The Bookbag.
September 10, 2014
I'm pretty sure that Eliza Robertson is destined to be one of the stars of Canadian literature. The best stories in this collection certainly suggest that: 'Who Will Water the Wallflowers?", "My Sister Sang", "Roadnotes" and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize-winning "We Walk on Water" are each superb. The rest however I found to be a bit of a mixed bag. Robertson's writing is imbued with a poetry that makes it hypnotic and begs to be read aloud for the pleasure of it, but sometimes it goes too far - a story about a stolen tiger and two camels was so overdone that I found myself reading it in a ta-tum-te-tum rhythm and not paying attention to the actual story. Other stories seem to just peter out or seem like exercises (the one that is written in reverse order for instance - it's a gimmick I've seen used several times before and often employed to better effect). But, goodness, when she brings everything together in just the right balance she absolutely soars. Definitely a writer to watch.
November 19, 2014
Reading “Wallflowers,” Eliza Robertson’s debut story collection, is like taking a solo swim across a chilly lake. You become mesmerized by details — the silken texture of the water, the cool air on your arms as they rise and fall, the rhythm of your breath, the dark scrub of trees on the distant shore — without ever forgetting the mysteries and potential dangers that lurk beneath. In this captivating book, people drown in gray water, shacks burn on stony beaches, planes crash into rivers, hummingbirds are trapped and tethered to wrists, neighborhoods flood. Grief and loss cast long shadows over these stories, which sometimes bring us to the threshold of disaster and sometimes explore its aftermath.
In “Who Will Water the Wallflowers?” a girl cat-sits for a neighbor, choosing to sleep at the neighbor’s house, sharing boiled eggs with a family of raccoons that lives in the hedge, exercising her independence from her mother, who remains at home roaming their empty rooms and washing in their bathtub the river stones she collects for a massage studio. All the while a deluge threatens to flood the neighborhood.
The story ends at the precipice of loss: Just as the mother places stones in her pockets to bring next door and show her daughter, a dike breaches. Muddy water, “a sinewy rush of it, the brown of upchucked peanuts,” uproots trees. The girl and cat make their way to the roof, where she calls for her mother while “fatty brown water laps at the first stair.” Amid this catastrophe, there is delicate beauty — the small hands of the raccoons dipping eggs into puddles, the generosity of the girl toward a drunken neighbor, the mother sipping her orange juice from a brandy snifter and the wallpaper flowers in the flooded bathroom suddenly thriving with all the water. “The wisteria sucks at it,” Robertson writes. “The hyacinths stand straighter. The peonies open their petals and sing.”
In an interview with the CBC, Robertson, who was born in Canada but now lives in Britain, said she is drawn to “a particular, slanted reality.” Often the grief in her stories is so huge the telling requires an oblique approach that can contain the crushing devastation without slipping into sentimentality. In “Ship’s Log,” the story unfolds as the young narrator digs a hole to China in the aftermath of his grandfather’s death. In “Roadnotes,” a woman writes travel letters home to her brother as she journeys south, following the wave of autumn colors from Vermont to Missouri, making discoveries about her dead mother and their dysfunctional family along the way. In the peculiarly titled “Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes Concerning Points of Taste and the Art of Making One’s Self Agreeable: A Handbook for Ladies,” abuse and revenge are revealed through an etiquette manual: “Learn to keep silence even if you know your husband to be wrong. The stoutest armor is a cordial spirit (and spirit in the glass doesn’t hurt).” In the particularly powerful “Where Have You Fallen, Have You Fallen?” the action unfolds in reverse and interweaves mythology while telling the story of a girl who has lost her mother and brother in a boating accident and must now make a new life in a faraway town with her uncle.
Robertson pays careful attention to the smallest detail, the one rich with opportunity and heartbreak: “She was seated with her uncle in the front row, and could even detect a milk stain on the reverend’s chest. It felt so disrespectful, that stain.” But “Wallflowers” also asks big questions, not only how we survive loss and achieve intimacy, but whether we are strong enough, like the flowers on the wallpaper, to stand straight and sing our sorrows to the world.
In “Who Will Water the Wallflowers?” a girl cat-sits for a neighbor, choosing to sleep at the neighbor’s house, sharing boiled eggs with a family of raccoons that lives in the hedge, exercising her independence from her mother, who remains at home roaming their empty rooms and washing in their bathtub the river stones she collects for a massage studio. All the while a deluge threatens to flood the neighborhood.
The story ends at the precipice of loss: Just as the mother places stones in her pockets to bring next door and show her daughter, a dike breaches. Muddy water, “a sinewy rush of it, the brown of upchucked peanuts,” uproots trees. The girl and cat make their way to the roof, where she calls for her mother while “fatty brown water laps at the first stair.” Amid this catastrophe, there is delicate beauty — the small hands of the raccoons dipping eggs into puddles, the generosity of the girl toward a drunken neighbor, the mother sipping her orange juice from a brandy snifter and the wallpaper flowers in the flooded bathroom suddenly thriving with all the water. “The wisteria sucks at it,” Robertson writes. “The hyacinths stand straighter. The peonies open their petals and sing.”
In an interview with the CBC, Robertson, who was born in Canada but now lives in Britain, said she is drawn to “a particular, slanted reality.” Often the grief in her stories is so huge the telling requires an oblique approach that can contain the crushing devastation without slipping into sentimentality. In “Ship’s Log,” the story unfolds as the young narrator digs a hole to China in the aftermath of his grandfather’s death. In “Roadnotes,” a woman writes travel letters home to her brother as she journeys south, following the wave of autumn colors from Vermont to Missouri, making discoveries about her dead mother and their dysfunctional family along the way. In the peculiarly titled “Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes Concerning Points of Taste and the Art of Making One’s Self Agreeable: A Handbook for Ladies,” abuse and revenge are revealed through an etiquette manual: “Learn to keep silence even if you know your husband to be wrong. The stoutest armor is a cordial spirit (and spirit in the glass doesn’t hurt).” In the particularly powerful “Where Have You Fallen, Have You Fallen?” the action unfolds in reverse and interweaves mythology while telling the story of a girl who has lost her mother and brother in a boating accident and must now make a new life in a faraway town with her uncle.
Robertson pays careful attention to the smallest detail, the one rich with opportunity and heartbreak: “She was seated with her uncle in the front row, and could even detect a milk stain on the reverend’s chest. It felt so disrespectful, that stain.” But “Wallflowers” also asks big questions, not only how we survive loss and achieve intimacy, but whether we are strong enough, like the flowers on the wallpaper, to stand straight and sing our sorrows to the world.
May 19, 2016
Not Munro, but…
I am continually amazed by the quality of the women writers who come out of Canada. Judging from this debut story collection, Eliza Robertson, who is only in her mid-twenties, promises to be one of them, once she has truly found her voice. But she already shows signs of a highly original mind. She has already staked out a territory about as far from the detailed realism of Alice Munro as possible. Her stories tend to be quirky, oblique, a little surreal, but they also speak to the concerns of real people in the contemporary world. Speak of them at a remove, that is. For almost all the stories appear to be about one thing, while in fact they are about something else.
"Roadnotes," perhaps my favorite, is a series of letters from a young woman to her sister (I think, but the genders are not clear) written on a road trip from Mont Tremblant down the eastern seaboard of the US to follow the fall foliage, but behind it are painful memories of their mother, who has just died. "Ship's Log" is the hourly progress report of a couple of children digging through the earth from Ontario to China; it is wonderfully oddball in its period setting, but it too has a recent bereavement in back of it. "My Sister Sang," another favorite, contains the notes taken by the transcriber of the cockpit voice recorders after a plane crash, but those open a window onto the world of his sister who, like the one person killed in the crash, was a professional singer.
The best of these work because when Robertson manages a perfect balance between the container story and the emotional content. But not all the stories come so perfectly into focus, when the everyday aspect and the container do not quite match. "Who Will Water the Wallflowers," for instance, begins: "The day before the flood, the girl slices lemons into a wide-mouthed mason jar." There then follows a beautifully-observed portrait of the lives in a few neighboring houses in a residential subdivision. But by the time the promised flood comes, one is not quite sure what the point has been. Or, at the other extreme, the wonderfully titled "Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes Concerning Points of Taste and the Art of Making One's Self Agreeable: A Handbook for Ladies" is a brilliant riff on old etiquette handbooks concealing a story about spousal abuse, but one that strays a little too close to melodrama for my personal taste.
But all the stories are interesting, and astonishingly varied in manner. "Electric Lady Rag" begins as a story about a young stripper, but expands backwards into the history of three generations of women in the sex trade: the girl, her mother, and her grandmother, a refugee from Nazi Germany. "Where have you fallen, have you fallen?" is literally told backwards, in chapters numbered from 8 to 1. Set in some First Nations community in Western Canada, this contains elements of magic realism, but Robertson is equally prone to include magical elements even among the bizarre grunge of a story such as "Missing Tiger, Camels, Found Alive." And then you get tantalizing links between stories, such as the number of times that pain au chocolat is mentioned, or the curious image of live birds tethered by strings to the hand.
Asked in a Globe and Mail interview why she writes, Robertson replied: "Because I love short stories. Because I have never read a novel that can be playful and grim and rambunctious and quiet and surreal and realist and spare and dense all at once." You will find all those adjectives here. Or you could just look at the cover photograph; it is a perfect teaser for this highly unusual collection. [3.8 stars]
I am continually amazed by the quality of the women writers who come out of Canada. Judging from this debut story collection, Eliza Robertson, who is only in her mid-twenties, promises to be one of them, once she has truly found her voice. But she already shows signs of a highly original mind. She has already staked out a territory about as far from the detailed realism of Alice Munro as possible. Her stories tend to be quirky, oblique, a little surreal, but they also speak to the concerns of real people in the contemporary world. Speak of them at a remove, that is. For almost all the stories appear to be about one thing, while in fact they are about something else.
"Roadnotes," perhaps my favorite, is a series of letters from a young woman to her sister (I think, but the genders are not clear) written on a road trip from Mont Tremblant down the eastern seaboard of the US to follow the fall foliage, but behind it are painful memories of their mother, who has just died. "Ship's Log" is the hourly progress report of a couple of children digging through the earth from Ontario to China; it is wonderfully oddball in its period setting, but it too has a recent bereavement in back of it. "My Sister Sang," another favorite, contains the notes taken by the transcriber of the cockpit voice recorders after a plane crash, but those open a window onto the world of his sister who, like the one person killed in the crash, was a professional singer.
The best of these work because when Robertson manages a perfect balance between the container story and the emotional content. But not all the stories come so perfectly into focus, when the everyday aspect and the container do not quite match. "Who Will Water the Wallflowers," for instance, begins: "The day before the flood, the girl slices lemons into a wide-mouthed mason jar." There then follows a beautifully-observed portrait of the lives in a few neighboring houses in a residential subdivision. But by the time the promised flood comes, one is not quite sure what the point has been. Or, at the other extreme, the wonderfully titled "Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes Concerning Points of Taste and the Art of Making One's Self Agreeable: A Handbook for Ladies" is a brilliant riff on old etiquette handbooks concealing a story about spousal abuse, but one that strays a little too close to melodrama for my personal taste.
But all the stories are interesting, and astonishingly varied in manner. "Electric Lady Rag" begins as a story about a young stripper, but expands backwards into the history of three generations of women in the sex trade: the girl, her mother, and her grandmother, a refugee from Nazi Germany. "Where have you fallen, have you fallen?" is literally told backwards, in chapters numbered from 8 to 1. Set in some First Nations community in Western Canada, this contains elements of magic realism, but Robertson is equally prone to include magical elements even among the bizarre grunge of a story such as "Missing Tiger, Camels, Found Alive." And then you get tantalizing links between stories, such as the number of times that pain au chocolat is mentioned, or the curious image of live birds tethered by strings to the hand.
Asked in a Globe and Mail interview why she writes, Robertson replied: "Because I love short stories. Because I have never read a novel that can be playful and grim and rambunctious and quiet and surreal and realist and spare and dense all at once." You will find all those adjectives here. Or you could just look at the cover photograph; it is a perfect teaser for this highly unusual collection. [3.8 stars]
March 31, 2015
This is the best collection of short stories I've read in a good long while. Eliza Robertson channels the dark and disturbing in a way that reminds me a lot of both Shirley Jackson and Flannery O'Connor. Read it!!!
January 2, 2015
Eliza Robertson’s Wallflowers starts with a bang but quickly loses momentum. “Who Will Water The Wallflowers?”, the first of numerous short stories, begins with the promise of a flood as a teenage girl house-sits for a neighbor on a street of identical houses. A few hundred feet away, her mother’s routine is disrupted without her daughter. A neighbor man pays a little too much attention to the girl. Then comes the flood; the girl climbs to the roof of the house and scans the water-drenched landscape for her mother. The story ends there, on an unexpected but poignant cliffhanger.
There’s not much resolution to be found in this collection of short stories, each of which aggressively omits a clean ending. It’s a refreshing—if frustrating—change of pace from the common packaging of narratives tied up with a neat bow. The problems is that the majority of stories feel like writing exercises: they should not part of a book, they belong in folders, hidden in drawers in a basement.
In short, the volume weighs down its better pieces: Stirring characters and heartrending experiences are diluted through their close proximity to each other and to more forgettable vignettes. All bleed into one another, so that the first story, by favor of its placement, is the only one that really sticks out. The collection’s diminishing returns affects the impact, too. Most of the stories center on people we’d rather look away from, namely the poor and the grieving. It’s all too easy to put blinders on when walking past a homeless person, just as being around those suffering the loss of loved ones can be so uncomfortable that it’s easier to ignore than to engage. Robertson puts what we’d rather not see on arresting display. It’s too bad it mostly gets lost in the mix.
There’s not much resolution to be found in this collection of short stories, each of which aggressively omits a clean ending. It’s a refreshing—if frustrating—change of pace from the common packaging of narratives tied up with a neat bow. The problems is that the majority of stories feel like writing exercises: they should not part of a book, they belong in folders, hidden in drawers in a basement.
In short, the volume weighs down its better pieces: Stirring characters and heartrending experiences are diluted through their close proximity to each other and to more forgettable vignettes. All bleed into one another, so that the first story, by favor of its placement, is the only one that really sticks out. The collection’s diminishing returns affects the impact, too. Most of the stories center on people we’d rather look away from, namely the poor and the grieving. It’s all too easy to put blinders on when walking past a homeless person, just as being around those suffering the loss of loved ones can be so uncomfortable that it’s easier to ignore than to engage. Robertson puts what we’d rather not see on arresting display. It’s too bad it mostly gets lost in the mix.
September 2, 2014
Short story collections elicit one of two reactions: a head-shaking, page-counting read or an on-the-edge-of-your-seat, all-consuming read.
Too often rookie short story writers leave readers with the former, forcing them to navigate through a pile of sloppy writing. At this stage, rookies don't understand the importance of varying characters' voices and their writing styles in their short story collections. In turn, all of their stories read the same, melding them into an awful sort of novel.
Those who can master the art of the short story -- jumping easily from character to character, setting to setting -- are the writers short fiction enthusiasts live for, and Eliza Robertson is one of those such writers.
Despite "Wallflowers" being her first short story collection, Robertson is as close to a pro on the art of this style of writing. Most of her stories vary in format, narrative mode and subject matter. For example, she starts off her collection with "Who Will Water the Flowers," a gut-wrenching, third-person account of a little girl facing threats from a predatory neighbour and a flood, followed by Robertson's second story: a first-person account of a boy digging a hole to China in "Ship's Log."
She manages to touch on common themes -- family, love, friendship, loneliness, aging -- but she does so through unusual settings. In "Missing Tiger, Camels Found Alive," she explores love through the lenses of a gardener who is on the lam with a pregnant beauty and stolen circus animals.
Despite the title, Robertson's "Wallflowers" bursts with powerful, skillful writing and deserves a place of prominence on reading lists this year.
Too often rookie short story writers leave readers with the former, forcing them to navigate through a pile of sloppy writing. At this stage, rookies don't understand the importance of varying characters' voices and their writing styles in their short story collections. In turn, all of their stories read the same, melding them into an awful sort of novel.
Those who can master the art of the short story -- jumping easily from character to character, setting to setting -- are the writers short fiction enthusiasts live for, and Eliza Robertson is one of those such writers.
Despite "Wallflowers" being her first short story collection, Robertson is as close to a pro on the art of this style of writing. Most of her stories vary in format, narrative mode and subject matter. For example, she starts off her collection with "Who Will Water the Flowers," a gut-wrenching, third-person account of a little girl facing threats from a predatory neighbour and a flood, followed by Robertson's second story: a first-person account of a boy digging a hole to China in "Ship's Log."
She manages to touch on common themes -- family, love, friendship, loneliness, aging -- but she does so through unusual settings. In "Missing Tiger, Camels Found Alive," she explores love through the lenses of a gardener who is on the lam with a pregnant beauty and stolen circus animals.
Despite the title, Robertson's "Wallflowers" bursts with powerful, skillful writing and deserves a place of prominence on reading lists this year.
October 24, 2014
Exquisite. Highly recommend to all.
Every story in this collection was intriguing. Every story seemed to center around how horrible, awful and miserably cranky people can be to each other, but not in a downer way. In a sneaky, enjoyable way.
Every story in this collection was intriguing. Every story seemed to center around how horrible, awful and miserably cranky people can be to each other, but not in a downer way. In a sneaky, enjoyable way.
April 5, 2015
Very vague stories with a multitude of unstable protagonists. Robertson lost me again and again though some stories started out okay. Maybe 2 stars. Only recommended to fans of experimental literature.
April 27, 2015
In Eliza Robertson’s Wallflowers, one of the stories features a woman who, after a car accident for which she is responsible, goes all to pieces. Earlier, she used to do interesting things: wander along the seashore to gaze at the sea urchins; write a food blog; cook chocolate brownies and lavender tea loaf with grated zucchini added. Now, she sits at home in a daze, letting her husband roast a chicken (a beer can wedged up its rectum) now and then. While she makes friends—of a sort—with the neighbour’s dog.
In other stories, a man steals a caravan containing a tiger and two camels, to please his heavily pregnant girlfriend. One woman makes buttered rum. Another cooks figgy pudding (a recipe is provided) for her husband, replete with sultanas and figs, hazelnuts and currants. A young boy, looking after a senile grandmother in the wake of World War I, makes semolina pudding and digs his way toward China. A German dancer’s act includes wrens fluttering about, secured to her arms by fishing line. A lone driver follows fall foliage along the Eastern Seaboard of the US, along with the memory of an eccentric mother…
Food. Fauna. Fractured Families. Flowers. Foliage. Recurring motifs in the seventeen short stories that comprise Robertson’s debut collection of short fiction. These are stories, inevitably, of people who have suffered in some way or the other: physically, mentally, emotionally. Bruised and battered, bereaved and bedevilled. Some fold under, some fight. They use food in the way all of us do, sometime or the other, in some way or the other: as a means to simply keep body and soul together, or as an anchor, even something to give meaning to life (or, in one memorable story, take it away). They use flowers, gardens, animals, birds in the same way: to help stay sane, to stay rooted. There is everyday life here, and something bordering on fantasy. Adventure and mundane, and an odd combination of the two.
Wallflowers is a mixed bag of stories, some heart-rending, others pure crazy (Missing Tiger, Camels Found Alive falls squarely into the latter category). Some—like the brilliantly poignant L’Étranger, in which a woman who shares a tiny living space with another woman, a stranger with whom she’s constantly at loggerheads—will haunt you with the insight they offer into life. Others, like Nightwalk, a ramble through a night as a hooker wanders along a beach and meets an old friend, are less likely to stay with you.
Robertson’s language is lyrical, her prose impeccable. Her storytelling is less so. Less memorable, less uniform. Tales like We Walked on Water (for which she won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize), Roadnotes, L’Étranger, and Ship’s Log are superb stories, not just sterling examples of the use of the English language. These are stories of pain and memories, of hopes and dreams—sometimes shattered—and of people like us. These are the stories which make this book a worthwhile read; several of the others tend to dilute the excellence of Wallflowers.
(From my review for The New Indian Express: http://www.newindianexpress.com/lifes...)
In other stories, a man steals a caravan containing a tiger and two camels, to please his heavily pregnant girlfriend. One woman makes buttered rum. Another cooks figgy pudding (a recipe is provided) for her husband, replete with sultanas and figs, hazelnuts and currants. A young boy, looking after a senile grandmother in the wake of World War I, makes semolina pudding and digs his way toward China. A German dancer’s act includes wrens fluttering about, secured to her arms by fishing line. A lone driver follows fall foliage along the Eastern Seaboard of the US, along with the memory of an eccentric mother…
Food. Fauna. Fractured Families. Flowers. Foliage. Recurring motifs in the seventeen short stories that comprise Robertson’s debut collection of short fiction. These are stories, inevitably, of people who have suffered in some way or the other: physically, mentally, emotionally. Bruised and battered, bereaved and bedevilled. Some fold under, some fight. They use food in the way all of us do, sometime or the other, in some way or the other: as a means to simply keep body and soul together, or as an anchor, even something to give meaning to life (or, in one memorable story, take it away). They use flowers, gardens, animals, birds in the same way: to help stay sane, to stay rooted. There is everyday life here, and something bordering on fantasy. Adventure and mundane, and an odd combination of the two.
Wallflowers is a mixed bag of stories, some heart-rending, others pure crazy (Missing Tiger, Camels Found Alive falls squarely into the latter category). Some—like the brilliantly poignant L’Étranger, in which a woman who shares a tiny living space with another woman, a stranger with whom she’s constantly at loggerheads—will haunt you with the insight they offer into life. Others, like Nightwalk, a ramble through a night as a hooker wanders along a beach and meets an old friend, are less likely to stay with you.
Robertson’s language is lyrical, her prose impeccable. Her storytelling is less so. Less memorable, less uniform. Tales like We Walked on Water (for which she won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize), Roadnotes, L’Étranger, and Ship’s Log are superb stories, not just sterling examples of the use of the English language. These are stories of pain and memories, of hopes and dreams—sometimes shattered—and of people like us. These are the stories which make this book a worthwhile read; several of the others tend to dilute the excellence of Wallflowers.
(From my review for The New Indian Express: http://www.newindianexpress.com/lifes...)
August 15, 2019
I wanted to be one of those who found this book haunting or astonishing. Instead, I'm in the other camp; it was "just okay". The stories read as a disconnected series of creative exercises or experiments. And is it jejune of me to say I couldn't find any of the characters likeable or sympathetic or their behaviours plausible, even though they seem to be set up to be or do so?
September 19, 2015
The nice thing about short stories is that you can read a few, savour, and leave the book for awhile. I enjoyed these stories,written by a young Canadian. A few were unsettling, a few just ended. But all were interesting. Thanks to my girl for introducing us to new talent!
November 6, 2014
A very uneven collection. Some stories are brilliant and very readable, others are so convoluted I found them impossible to follow.
November 30, 2016
DNF
I tried to like it. There were at least two that I enjoyed (including the first story).
But it lacked something. It lacked cohesion or a sort of magic that brings a story to life.
I tried to like it. There were at least two that I enjoyed (including the first story).
But it lacked something. It lacked cohesion or a sort of magic that brings a story to life.
August 26, 2018
A few of these stories were really good, but most of them were just "meh" for me.
April 20, 2020
Eliza Robertson’s story collection, Wallflowers, strives for startling effect through eccentric story structures and narrative experimentation. The book includes 17 pieces, many of which chronicle lives of missed opportunity and emotional isolation. A lot of the people we meet in these pages are broken, emotionally and/or physically. “Ship’s Log” is exactly what the title says: a story in the form of logbook entries. However, these entries are composed by a boy imagining that the hole he is digging will aid in his escape from an untenable situation. In “Slimebank Taxonomy” Gin, suffering from postpartum depression, wants nothing to do with her new baby and finds solace collecting animal corpses from a tailings pond. “We Walked on Water,” narrated by the sister of the dead girl, recounts a tragic occurrence at a competitive sporting event. And in the title story, “Who Will Water the Wallflowers?” a teenage girl house-sitting for a neighbour finds herself facing a flash flood situation with nothing to rely on but her own wits. Robertson’s sentences have polish and sheen to spare. Her prose is so precisely composed that it can sometimes seem sculpted rather than written. The stories shimmer with vibrant imagery and surprising but apt metaphors. For all their technical virtuosity however, what often seems to be missing (“We Walked on Water” is a notable exception) is a way for the reader to burrow into the characters’ lives and forge a meaningful connection with them. Many of Robertson’s people observe the world from within the bubble of an exceedingly bizarre perspective (see “Ship’s Log”). Many of them behave oddly as well, but because we are held at a distance from their inner lives, their odd behaviour does not arouse much curiosity or sympathy—it’s just odd. Some stories come across as a challenge the author set herself, as in “Missing Tiger, Camels Found Alive,” based on an incident that occurred a few years ago in Quebec involving the theft of zoo animals, which never really comes alive. “Where Have You Fallen, Have You Fallen?” which effectively describes a budding attraction between a young man and woman, is written in eight numbered sections, but these are arranged in reverse chronological order, from eight to one, so that as the story ends the two are yet to meet. The story is clever and succeeds in nudging the reader out of his comfort zone, but upon reflection you can’t help but wonder what the author has gained by so brazenly upending conventional structures, other than to appear clever. In the end, the impression left by Wallflowers is one of technique overwhelming story: that the manner of the telling takes precedence over what is being told. We finish the book dazzled by the author’s technical brilliance, but the stories themselves fade quickly from the memory. It’s clear however, that Eliza Robertson is a fearless and exceptionally talented writer. Wallflowers shows huge promise. Perhaps her next book will deliver on that promise.
September 4, 2017
These are stories of isolation, loneliness, sadness and sorry where the characters are observant in their aloneness. I really liked the final story about the siblings training for the marathon - melancholy and poignant. Also the story called Slimebank Taxonomy. Perfect quote: "I read once that grief is like waiting . . . Waiting for Act III, the plot twist. Like when you drop a twig into the stream and it never emerges on the other side of the bridge." Good collection. Eager to see additional work from this talented writer.
July 8, 2021
Who Will Water the Wallflowers? ****
Ship's Log *****
My Sister Sang ****
Worried Woman's Guide ****
Nightwalk ****
Where have you fallen, have you fallen? ****
Roadnotes *****
L'Etranger ****
Electric Lady Rag ****
We Are As Mayflies ****
Missing Tiger. Camels Found Alive ***
Sea Life ****
Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes Concerning Points of Taste and the Art of Making One's Self Agreeable: A Handbook for Ladies ****
Good for the Bones ****
Here Be Dragons ****
Slimebank Taxonomy ****
We Walked on Water *****
Ship's Log *****
My Sister Sang ****
Worried Woman's Guide ****
Nightwalk ****
Where have you fallen, have you fallen? ****
Roadnotes *****
L'Etranger ****
Electric Lady Rag ****
We Are As Mayflies ****
Missing Tiger. Camels Found Alive ***
Sea Life ****
Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes Concerning Points of Taste and the Art of Making One's Self Agreeable: A Handbook for Ladies ****
Good for the Bones ****
Here Be Dragons ****
Slimebank Taxonomy ****
We Walked on Water *****
October 28, 2019
The stories sadly made me feel nothing, something was missing, which the auther tried to make up for with fancy and pretentious words that were mostly very unnecessary, which they always are but in this work especially, I really appreciated the ideas and way of writing in most stories nonetheless, the execution just wasn't the best
December 19, 2017
I have some thoughts on the use of intellectual disability in the stories, but otherwise really enjoyed reading them. They were varied in style, approach, etc. but all easy, well-written enjoyable reads. Mostly about grief.
July 10, 2017
Beautiful and haunting stories.
November 28, 2017
Some of the stories were engaging. Overall they read liked exercises: unfinished ideas.
December 16, 2019
Lovely collection of short stories with beautiful prose that spills across the pages.
Read
August 6, 2024Did not get very far, as I really didn't get the story or situation being described, and it wasn't good enough to figure out.
January 19, 2015
The book lay like a monarch butterfly on my desk under the Spider-Man table light. I rubbed my eyes, tired from the strain of their work. Writing exercises, I thought, covered in Canadiana--like Roots sweaters at Christmas or a Tim Horton's trash bin at Roll-Up-The Rim time--enough to win awards and the rapt attention of a nation's self-important literati.
I closed the book and went to bed. Sleepless thrashing brought a stew of admiration and loathing. What talent! What pretension! Could the author write a full novel? Could she hold a plot and see it through before drowning it with descriptives of canning preserves and bitumen-covered ducks?
I knew I would read that book. The bedsheets grew damp under my resentful face as Spidey watched, judged, pitied.
I closed the book and went to bed. Sleepless thrashing brought a stew of admiration and loathing. What talent! What pretension! Could the author write a full novel? Could she hold a plot and see it through before drowning it with descriptives of canning preserves and bitumen-covered ducks?
I knew I would read that book. The bedsheets grew damp under my resentful face as Spidey watched, judged, pitied.
September 8, 2014
A collection that elicits envy from a fellow writer and uvic grad. I found myself pausing on almost every page in awe of her rhythm and thrilled by fresh descriptions and metaphors that made the world new to me. This collection read like a novel. I did not start and stop and start and stop and forget it on my book shelf as I admittedly tend to do with short story collections; I ate it up whole.
My favourites: my sister sang, roadnotes, and we walked on water.
My favourites: my sister sang, roadnotes, and we walked on water.
March 15, 2015
This is a very impressive debut. The stories are rich in style and format, representing varied themes and cultural environment. For me the most entertaining were first few pieces, that were intricate, absurd, and "crisp." The other stories did not appeal to me so much, but were still interesting. It was a very strange and intriguing how some of inferred plots weaved themselves through consecutive stories to end with return to the sister's death.
October 29, 2014
I vaguely remember reading Aimee Bender stories for the first time and feeling that they would be important to me for years. If pressed to choose a favorite book, I always say Bender's 'The Girl in the Flammable Skirt'. These stories have nothing to do with AB, but holy cow-- I can't help thinking this is a book I will read time and time again. The stories are chilling, haunting, touching, memorable-- all the compliments I can think to give are given. Run don't walk for a copy of 'Wallflowers'.
April 27, 2015
I find I enjoy short stories a lot more than I used to and this book was no exception. In a novel, I expect some sort of closure but I don't have the same expectation for short stories. In fact, part of what I like is a story that leaves you thinking/wondering. This book, and it's stories, did that for me.
September 22, 2015
I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. It took me a bit to go with her rhythm. This author has a different flow to her words. Her style reminds me of Heather O'Neill another Canadian author. I loved these stories.
I used to read a lot of short story collections when my kids were little and I will be looking for more in the future.
I recommend this book.
I used to read a lot of short story collections when my kids were little and I will be looking for more in the future.
I recommend this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews