Mind the Gap

by Alice Zorn

250 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2026

About the author

Originally from Hamilton, Ontario, Alice Zorn has now lived for many years in Montreal. Her most recent novel, Colours in Her Hands, welcomes the reader into Mina's curious, sometimes puzzling, sometimes frustrating world.

Her novel, Five Roses, was nominated for the Ontario Library Association's 2017 Evergreen Award and has been translated into French.

She has also published a novel, Arrhythmia, and a book of short fiction, Ruins & Relics, which was a finalist for the 2009 Quebec Writers' Federation First Book Prize.

Her new book of short fiction, Mind the Gap, was released in 2026.

Reviews

[Karen Ocana · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5
Before I forget, I want to say how much I enjoyed this collection of character-driven relationship-focussed travel tales. Alice Zorn's characters are always a treat to spend time with. I know, having read Colours in Her Hands, and Five Roses. These new stories aren't destination pieces. You wouldn't even guess from the title -- Mind the Gap -- that each story involves a trip. But who doesn't love a trip?
If it is the journey that counts not the vacationing aspect, it's because for travel to be good it must change the traveller... But don't trust me, trust the stories. One of the shortest and most impactful opens Mind the Gap. Born-Died. A girl in search of her biological parents travels to Guanajuato and is shocked by what she discovers. Another, What the Dead Want, reunites an estranged couple by means of a 5-minute conversation that thrusts one of them on a death-defying Texas road trip, ferrying an urn. Short life-altering conversations might be counted as one of Zorn's specialties. At the outset of The Land of Clouds, Patricia is mending an ancient hem when Nita walks in and watches, but she's leaving, and to Patricia's amazement she's leaving a museum-worthy piece behind, along with a phrase - the land of clouds - which becomes somewhere that Patricia must go.
I've been to Morocco. Morocco is the last story in Mind the Gap (which is also the title of one of the middle stories), and the longest. Morocco is long enough and tense enough that it got on my nerves, but what an ending!
Zorn's talent lies not only in the difficult art of character-driven story-telling, but in her peerless ability to bring places to life with her deft off-centre descriptions. They stick in our memory. It is when the material world speaks and we listen that transformations, and art, begins.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Zorn had her own gap to mind while writing this collection, the invisible yet influential gap between writer and story. And she nailed it. Her settings and descriptions from various countries shine with detail, color, clarity, but without writerly excess. She observes, like a camera focusing on what’s fascinating. She never forces conflict or dilemma on her characters just for the sake of it, they always seem to find their own way there quite naturally, from being who they are in the situation they’re in. And she never judges their actions, which are neither saintly nor evil, only human, launched by anger and lust and loneliness and betrayal and curiosity and much else. All of this allows us to perceive the characters and action without filters. It’s such a pleasure to read stories with this type of writing.

Beautifully crafted stories, is how the back cover describes them. I couldn’t agree more. Stories with travel as a theme, also, though without much vacationing. Several of them involve quests, some more subtle than others, and characters in stages of crises. Characters who, just as with the writing, drew me in, and I’m still wondering, some weeks after finishing the collection, why I remember many of them so clearly.

It nearly feels wrong to pick out a single story, but I’m going to anyway. The finale, “Morocco.” I’ve never read a better novella. The length allows for a richer dive into the country and culture, but it’s the characters both seen and unseen that gripped me. They had me questioning and sympathizing with and practically yelling at them, all the way to an unforgettable, perfect ending. If there was an award for final paragraphs, the one in “Morocco” would get my vote. For its impact.

It’s a no-doubter. Five stars.

[Christine Hassay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully written short story travel fiction collection that explores the complexities of relationships and identity in a relatable and compelling way. A great read.

[Enid Wray]

Adored Colour in Her Hands. This collection? Not so much.

I was with her until the third, title, story - Mind the Gap. She completely lost me with that one.

DNF