Description
Told with arresting candor, Leslie Greentree's short fiction creates the satisfying sense of discovering someone's long-kept secret, or the guilty pleasure of overhearing a scathing conversation. A housewife indulges in monthly purchases of specialty vinegar and savours her romantic fantasies about the local grocery store manager; a daughter catches glimpses of herself in the face of her mother's suffocating attentions; a minor astronomer accumulates star charts and wasted nights rather than tender moments with his wife. A Minor Planet for You explores the often wry, sometimes dark but consistently fragile constellations of human relationships. "Intricately and subtly developed, a smart irony permeates these stories." Gloria Sawai "Leslie Greentree's stylistic see-sawing between comedy and tragedy is one of the main reasons why this book is hard to put down." Lisa Grekul
Awards
- Alberta Book Publishing Awards - Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction 2007
Reviews
"More importantly, [Greentree] said, her stories are about relationships. And probably more specifically, the gaps or spaces between people in their relationships." Penny Caster, Red Deer Advocate, May 12, 2006
"Alberta poet Leslie Greentree opens her debut story collection with a glass of peachy New Zealand white, then plunges us into figurative tannins. This book offers bracing challenges to the palate..Many of these tales are themselves erratics, their structures and bald honesty placing them outside the expected." Jim Bartley, The Globe and Mail, August 19, 2006.
"Leslie Greentree.looks at a new genre in her first collection of short stories: A Minor Planet for You (University of Alberta Press, 2006). One of the tales, Best Wishes Always, follows Beth, the proprietor of unusual wine goblets from marriages gone awry. Through this unusual collection, two of Beth's friends find each other, and ironically, love. In While God was Driving Away, Susan's long time friend Marion also finds someone: God, and Susan wonders if things will ever be the same between them." Sandra Wiebe, Avenue Magazine, March, 2006.
"You won't find redemption in Greentree's collection. You will find female protagonists with a tendency to run petty, anonymous interferences into the lives of others, who suffer in unfulfilling relationships, who don't fit in, who suck back a lot of wine and who are charmingly honest with themselves..Greentree's determined, authentic storytelling makes the collection very readable." Marlene Wurfel, VUE Weekly, September 21, 2006.
"[A Minor Planet for You] is filled with stories that pull you in and leave you wondering, as good stories often do, what happens to the characters after you read the last word..Greentree's writing is intense and often funny, and her stories focus on the small quirks that make relationships either work or fail miserably..For the short story lover, [it] should be considered [a] summer [must-read]." Melanie Owen, the Calgary Herald, July 23, 2006.
"A housewife's secret vices, the mirror a girl sees in her overbearing mother, a husband's avoidance hobby-the dark secrets of life are described in this humourous and dark collection." Prairie books NOW, spring 2006.
"Greentree's collection is very strong....Greentree has two previous collections of poetry (one of which was short-listed for the '04 Griffin Prize) and she consistently demonstrates a poet's way with words in her stories." Ted Harms, The Danforth Review, January 2007. Full review at: www.danforthreview.com/reviews/fiction/randall_greentree.htm
"Greentree offers witty characters, varied settings, and a nonintrusive narrative style that enhances the reader's appreciation for a compelling situation." M.W. Cox, University of Pittsburgh, Choice Magazine, January 2007
"Greentree is a published poet who handles imagery effectively. A number of the stories feature objects that sit in their midsts like Zen koans, inviting interpretation yet resisting it...Greentree¹s writing has much to recommend it, including a vividly terse prose style and a keen ear for the idiomatic speech of twentysomethings....[S]he is certainly a writer to watch for in the future." Tim Haner, Canadian Literature, Spring 2007 [Full review at http://www.canlit.ca/reviews-review.php?id=13091]
"Each tale in A Minor Planet for You reflects Greentree's intriguing ability to craft a complete character in just a few pages. Themes of love, friendship, despair, anger, joy, wonder, desperation and the complicated web of emotions rest firmly at the core o f many of the stories. Greentree richly transports readers into another world, if just for a time-meaningful glimpses into journeys that may be far removed from our own. Or uncomfortably close. All is not neatly wrapped up come the end of some of the tales, but it doesn't matter. They stay with you, provoking thought, evoking images and leaving you with that delightful sense you've ventured off for just a while." Mark Weber, Red Deer Express, May 17, 2006