Shattered Fossils

by Sharon Lax

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771834858
Publisher:	Guernica Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2020
Series:	Essential Prose Series , #179
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Currently, Sharon Lax calls Deux-Montagnes, near Montreal, her home. She's had several, all of which have given texture to these stories: L.A., Waukegan, Boston, Toronto, Vancouver and, of course, Montreal. A writer, teacher, activist and editor, her favourite pastime, besides writing and walking along forested mountain paths, is working for and with animals and educating the public on their behalf. Sharon Lax has published in the Quebec Writers' Federation’s online journal carte blanche, The Dalhousie Review, The Rover and Montréal Serai. Like all inhabitants of this planet, Sharon aspires to reach that one fine place, also a moment in time, that resounds like a perfect note, what Lawrin S. Harris called the "summit of my soul ... there where the universe sings."

Read an Excerpt

I imagine, Thomas, wherever you're headed, you'll be winding your timepiece; while down here, I'll be waiting around for a woman who makes Purgatory look like Paradiso.

Table of Contents

Dawn Ascends 1

An Ark of Gopherwood 3

The Earl of Beaconsfield 29

Four Characters 47

Life is but a Dream 73

Freedom 87

The Left Eye 91

Les monstres affectueux - Affectionate Monsters 113

Love Along the 63^rd - A Symphony 143

Raw Sugar 159

The Bard of Dorchester Square 183

Then They Went on Their Way 207

Memory Becomes You 229

Acknowledgements 246

About the Author 248

Editorial Reviews

In Shattered Fossils, Sharon Lax has created a complex bricolage of music, visual art, poetry, and scientific knowledge to show readers that, even in our moments of grief, insecurity, secrecy, and pain, we are always connected to beauty, and to one another, through complex webs of cultural meaning. Her stories, erudite and ecstatic and sometimes ekphrastic, carry readers across dreamscapes to sites of mourning, scenes of crime, and wellsprings of shifting memories; each should be savored for the intellectual flourishes and bursts of poetry from an author whose creative powers are on full display.

Alice Hatcher

These are captivating, erudite stories written in beautifully textured imagistic prose. The characters are complex and well-delineated; the settings are unforgettable and inseparable from the characters' drama.

H. Nigel Thomas

The narratives in Shattered Fossils pay 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.

Ottawa Review of Books

When the world’s pouring in,” a character asks in Sharon Lax’s Shattered Fossils, “what would you do?” It’s 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 Lax’s work compel a glittering awareness of how we strive to make something beautiful from the strangeness of our lives.

Mark Abley

Lax’s 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.

Jane Affleck

These are captivating, erudite stories written in beautifully textured imagistic prose. The characters are complex and well-delineated; the settings are unforgettable and inseparable from the characters' drama.

Author or Fate's Instruments - Nigel Thomas

"When the world's pouring in," a character asks in Sharon Lax's Shattered Fossils, "what would you do?? It's 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 Lax's work compel a glittering awareness of how we strive to make something beautiful from the strangeness of our lives." Mark Abley, author of The Organist In Shattered Fossils, Sharon Lax has created a complex bricolage of music, visual art, poetry, and scientific knowledge to show readers that, even in our moments of grief, insecurity, secrecy, and pain, we are always connected to beauty, and to one another, through complex webs of cultural meaning. Her stories, erudite and ecstatic and sometimes ekphrastic, carry readers across dreamscapes to sites of mourning, scenes of crime, and wellsprings of shifting memories; each should be savored for the intellectual flourishes and bursts of poetry from an

From the Publisher