English Stories

Cynthia Flood’s The English Stories offers a series of twelve linked fictions detailing the story of Amanda Ellis, a young Canadian girl who goes with her parents to England ‘for a year that stretched into two’, and her life at St. Mildred’s school. Unlike many linked story collections which come to mind, however - Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women and Sharon English’s Uncomfortably Numb are among two of the best - Flood’s suite is not limited to first person narration by the heroine; rather, Flood chooses to spice this collection with a wide range of perspectives and voices. The result is an intricate collage which gives a sense of English life as viewed by an outsider during the 1950s, as the country tries to dust itself off in both the aftermath of the Second World War and the collapse of the British Empire. The English Stories is an assured and mature collection by one of the best short story writers to come out of Canada, pairing striking emotional depth with tremendous technical skill.