What Can You Do?

by Cynthia Flood

In these twelve stories that unfold over a few hours or a weekend or five decades, adults deceive themselves about their motives―greed, desire for control, jealousy, fear, ambition. With unflinching realism, reminiscent of William Trevor, Cynthia Flood exposes the failings of the human heart and with a marvellous unsentimental brutality leaves many a character unredeemed.

Genres: Short Stories

152 pages, Paperback

Published October 10, 2017

About the author

Cynthia Flood grew up in Toronto (apart from two years in England), and after university lived in California and New York. Returning to Canada, she lived briefly again in Toronto and then in Montreal before moving to Vancouver in 1969.

In the late 60s and early 70s Cynthia Flood began to publish short fiction. Left-wing and feminist activity was also a focus through the 80s, along with work on various political magazines and newspapers. She taught in the English Department at Langara College, and was much involved with the faculty union and Women's Studies.

Her first collection, The Animals In Their Elements, appeared in 1987, and was followed in 1992 by My Father Took A Cake To France (both from Talonbooks). Her first novel, Making A Stone Of The Heart, was published in 2002 by Key Porter.

At present she remains connected politically but concentrates on writing. A second novel is underway.
The English Stories

Her latest book, The English Stories, appeared in May 2009 from Biblioasis Press. It's a suite of short stories set in 1950s England, in a girls' school and in a small residential hotel. The collection has won glowing reviews in Quill & Quire, the Globe and Mail online, and the Vancouver Sun.

One story, "Religious Knowledge," won the National Magazines Gold Award in 2000, and "Miss Pringle's Hour" (originally in Descant) appeared in the Salon des Refusés issue of Canadian Notes & Queries in Summer 2008. "Learning to Dance" appeared in the 2008 Best Canadian Stories, edited by John Metcalf.

Reviews

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Something didn't click between me and this slim volume. I found the prose almost hypnotic in its lyricism, but only two of the stories -- Wing Nut & History Lesson(s) -- seemed to speak to me in any substantial way. Overall, this felt like something ethereal that slipped in and out of my attention span with barely a ripple.

[Eniko Rozsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging relatable collection of short stories.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book of short stories, filled with characters who share some most intimate moments, all to briefly. Wonderful capture of Vancouver and, people if a time and place.

[Kim Fu]

What Can You Do (Biblioasis) is an appropriate title for Cynthia Flood’s latest short story collection, as many of the stories concern inaction. Characters fail to act when they should, or convince themselves that there was nothing they could have done—the child is already dead, the children are already grown, the relationship is already over, the attacker is already in prison. Tragedies are inevitable until they’ve passed, or it’s just not the characters’ problem. When played straight, as in a couple of the weaker stories, these feelings of helplessness and resignation can seem anticlimactic. More often, though, Flood treats her characters’ rationalizations with a subtle, adroit sense of irony, to darkly comic results. Standouts include “Dog and Sheep,” in which a group of insufferable tourists are treated as interchangeable (they speak in a first-person plural chorus, without dialogue tags), and “Open, Close,” which contains two versions of a woman’s life, and is Alice Munro-like in its confidence, clarity and temporal complexity.

Review originally appeared in Maisonneuve magazine, Fall 2017.

[Arlie]

Meh