Loose Pearls & Other Stories

by D.C. Troicuk

Cape Breton University Press

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, June 2010

This first collection of stories from D. C. Troicuk are quietly understated as life flows gently below the surface of daily life. Family cold wars are buried deep, and sometimes the glue holding things together, no matter what, is tainted by dislikes and resentments, bound inextricably by duty. The boiling point is not an explosion but rather an understanding that takes hold, a clarity of vision which builds until somehow, mostly, characters see the reality of their truths.

Wendy brings home strays, young men who remind her of Billy, her brother who vanished many years ago.  We never know why, but we know that Wendy never stops searching.  An underlying sense of responsibility causes her to forgive transgressions and overlook the obvious, maintaining a code of silence, even when it is clear that she must become complicit in a crime.

In Katia Suffers, Katia’s life has become bound to the service of others.  She cooks and cleans for her husband and cares for her hypochondriac sister with a “…high tolerance for the list of maladies Vera collects from women’s magazines…”  But she lies awake at night, “casting wishes like nets."

A young girl finds out she is pregnant.  A pervert’s victim cowers indoors. “I am the proud owner of a newly renovated deck where I cannot sit, a lawn I cannot mow, a garden that that has become a bug buffet.”  Her pivotal moment is when she realizes she is not powerless.

Troicuk is an excellent teller of tales.  She writes with a clarity of vision that brings focus to her stories, and the setting and her characters speak to the rich flavour of Cape Breton Island, without drifting toward folksy.  These stories are simply Cape Breton.

Troicuk’s first book, Loose Pearls, is triumphant, and surely an indication of things to come. The good news is that her next book, a novel, is already in progress.

D.C. Troicuk lives and works in Cape Breton. Her work has appeared in several journals, including the Antigonish Review, the Pottersfield Portfolio and Canadian Living.  This is her first book.