Octogenarian Jane Campbell may be "new" to the publishing industry, but her first book, Cat Brushing, is refreshingly accomplished. The 13 exquisitely drawn short stories in the collection are woven with wit and bold enlightenment. Each meticulously crafted gem focuses on the lives of aging women who grapple with their shrinking places in the world while coming to terms with feelings and failings, choices and losses.
In "Susan and Miffy," longing, need and sensuality surprise a woman who "never put a foot over the line" and now lives out her days in a care facility. Having grown distant from her self-interested adult children, the woman, Susan, experiences an unexpected awakening at the gentle touch of her attentive manicurist, Miffy.
A similar theme infuses "On Being Alone," the tender story of one writerly woman's life and a sense of loneliness that persists throughout marriages, affairs and motherhood. She settles alone in a small village; when it's ravaged by a violent storm, she takes in a neighbor whose house is destroyed. The two disparate souls form a bond deeper than either could have imagined.
Aspects of regret, mourning, fantasies and lost love infuse these eloquently rendered, skillfully plotted stories that pack a wallop. "Ageing is often represented as an accumulation, of disease, of discomforts, of wrinkles," says the narrator of the title story. However, in Campbell's wholly original, late-in-life stories, the limitations compelled by age become surprising sources of wisdom and empowered liberation. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines