BookDragon Blog

Martha Wilson, a U.S. expat who has lived in Canada for more than two decades, adroitly balances characters from both sides of the shared border (and beyond) throughout her exceptional debut of 16 short stories, Nosy White Woman. While first collections might often prove uneven, Wilson achieves a rare laudable consistency throughout.

Standouts, of course, are many. In the titular “Nosy White Woman,” Wilson subtly, skillfully transforms a Thanksgiving family meal into a daughter’s racially charged warning to her septuagenarian mother, who’s about to make her annual Canada-to-Florida snowbird journey. By invoking the tragedies of Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland, the daughter adeptly cautions her mother about the potentially fatal consequences of engaging police as a concerned (white) citizen. Wilson ingeniously examines the impermanence of humanity in “My,” as an elderly man’s existence gets erased when the last person with any memories of him eventually passes away. In “Binoculars,” a woman whose property was the site of a devastating auto accident helps the victim’s mother shepherd her daughter’s spirit to her final resting place – with extra protection. “Near Hickory” is about a teenager working as a summer au pair who learns about the casual, careless privileges of wealth. And in “Midway,” a woman who’s always worked in her family’s small-town fruitcake business experiences the rest of the world through her insatiable consumption of international news.

While her settings might feel commonplace – kitchen-table dramas, extended holiday gatherings, generational disconnects, neighborly interactions – Wilson adds an extra quirk, an unexpected fleeting detail, a sudden revelation that ensures a satisfyingly lingering resonance with each and every story.

Discover: Martha Wilson’s exemplary debut collection transforms everyday experiences into moments of surprising, unexpected awareness.

Review: “Fiction,” Shelf Awareness, August 30, 2019

Readers: Adult

Published: 2019