Loose Pearls and Other Stories

Loose Pearls and Other Stories is a gritty but polished collection of short stories by Glace Bay writer D.C. Troicuk.

 

These varied stories focus on the immigrant heritage, the compromised, the handicapped and those who have become isolated through one set of circumstances or another. The title of one searing story, “Brick Fronts”, is emblematic of the collection but the book draws its title from a touching immigrant story in which the main character feels her family history slipping away, one pearl at a time.

 

In “Loose Pearls”, one of the strongest in the collection, the daughter Anna was driven as a child and younger woman to collect the family stories but as her mind begins to betray her, she feels a need to impart what she has gleaned. She was born in the Ukraine, the oldest in a family that was raised in Glace Bay. Her memory is longer than that of her siblings and now she ponders each fading vignette, each explanation for what has shaped the family. It is not in her nature to openly divulge secrets so she repeatedly lays out bait for her brothers who are disinclined to reach the conclusions she is compelled to draw them toward.

 

“Overburden” taps a seam already welltapped by novelists, short story writers and songwriters but Troicuk brings to the surface a man more damaged by his own short-comings than another man who lost his son because of those shortcomings. Doc MacSween is years out of the pit but he remembers each man who went down below one fateful shift, recounts to himself each man’s particular tale of woe. He lives on, unforgiven even in the face of the most forgiving.

 

“Katia Suffers”, another immigrant story, begins with a masterful sentence, then a masterful paragraph and another revealing sentence, an effective luring of the reader. It is a story of two sisters whose lives diverged but they are back under the same roof. One serves, one complains. One is angry, one lives in quiet pain, each with a version of the same secret. The unhappy sibling relationship is entrenched until one sister makes an unexpected gesture that releases them both.

 Loose Pearls is a book to be shared among friends who may find some stories are more polished than others. Choosing the best stories in such a strong collection is likely to spur passionate debate. —Rosalie MacEachern