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Apr 08, 2024 By Frank Valish

Grandview Drive is the debut effort from Saskatchewan’s Tim Blackett. The book is a collection of 16 short stories that exude loneliness, isolation, and the often desolate nature of human experience. One of the fascinating elements of Grandview Drive is that all of the stories herein are interconnected. An accident is witnessed by a child, parents, and a pastor’s son, all whom have their own story or stories within the collection. The connections between the players are realized in time as one reads, working to piece together a larger picture from these separate narratives. Often the lives of the players in Grandview Drive are lived in the shadows. The past is haunting and the present is often disappointing. Each story is affecting in its own way, and sometimes in reading through Grandview Drive it feels like one’s entire formative history is being dredged up for reexamination. But ultimately what these interconnected stories betray is the universality of the emotion contained therein. In this way, the oft-struggling, sometimes borderline pathetic characters of Grandview Drive become all of us, our wounds laid bare but with the realization that ultimately every house on the block deals with the same. (www.nightwoodeditions.com)

Author rating: 7/10