Shattered Fossils [Paperback]

Shattered Fossils, a collection of short stories, takes its title from themes of the irretrievable past, particularly within Ark of Gopherwood, in which the narrator describes his friend as someone who has pieced together elements of the historical past, to create a more complete picture of history. From the short story in which a character enters a painted sidewalk, the collection moves into an exploration of the creation of memoir and memory. Some of the stories, but especially one about a 'bard,' set in Montreal, another set in Iceland and one set off the coast of England, contain ghosts. The last is told from a ghost's perspective. Her husband, a mathematician, has called her from the shadows. While she was alive, he insisted time was immutable. Now he is attempting to solve the equation that will bring her back.

The narratives inShattered Fossilspay rapt attention to what mind and matter can do, their chain reactions across time and space. Each carefully crafted story investigates reality, without ignoring sources of political friction or questions of gender politics, with language that deploys generous helpings of musical effects.

Laxs stories further the journey of questioning pre-pandemic normalcy. They may also suggest means to creating a future world that resists or dispenses with that so-called normalcy and its attendant oppressive ideologies, including colonialism, capitalism, heteronormativity and the binaries of sex and gender, and anthropocentrism.

When the worlds pouring in, a character asks in Sharon Laxs Shattered Fossils, what would you do? Its a question that echoes through these intense stories  stories haunted by the past, haunted too by the pain of other living creatures. The troubled relationships at the heart of Laxs work compel a glittering awareness of how we strive to make something beautiful from the slSQ