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". ... her characters speak from the margins of society, or of their own sanity ... Many of them are tormented, often through no fault of their own, and all of them haunted. They sense things that are not there, see them, even talk to them. Reality, in Hallett's world, is neither a given nor taken for granted. ...[her] writing is succinct and taut, her topics both universal and so offbeat as to be genuinely original, and her manner spare and unsparing. She'll be nominated for a Giller Prize next, just you watch."
"Demons are at work – the kind that lurk in the subconscious and surface, depending on the individual, as either despairing visions or acts of outright brutality. … [The story “Obliged to drink bad water” is] a rich and demanding read, its meanings growing and teasing the mind in retrospect. Risk is Hallett’s mode – and her audience’s challenge. …It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how the standout stories here work their magic. Hallett seems often to be creating from a subliminal place, riding on intuition, unencumbered by the counsel of editors."
"The characters Butler Hallett has created in The shadow side of grace could be your neighbour down the street, the person sitting next to you on the bus, or perhaps your best friend. There will also likely be times when you'll glimpse a little bit of yourself in the people she has captured in her words."
"Rarely has a local short story collection yielded as sparking a gem as 'Astigmatism,' the second of thirteen stories in Michelle Butler Hallett's debut offering The shadow side of grace. ... Butler Hallett choreographs a careful dance that reads the ground between childhood and maturity, light and dark innocence and culpability."
"Butler Hallett speaks with the tongues of men, women and angels - and occasionally herring gulls."
"This is a wonderfully distinctive collection of stories. ... A writer like this comes along once or twice in a generation ..."
"Butler Hallett, a student of Elizabethan drama, twentieth-century Russian history and the development of radio, draws from all of her influences to create a genre that is truly her own. Her stories are grim and often like macabre fairy tales. ... One of Butler Hallett's strengths is her ability to illuminate just how far reaching personal history can be. That isn't to say the characters in these stories are without hope, or, as the title says, a fair amount of grace. But nothing is sugar coated and nobody gets off easy. And that is perhaps the true story of Newfoundland."
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New Release Available Now "a rare debut, a collection that takes more risks than some writers take in a lifetime." -Michael Crummey |
