‘Blood Secrets’ by Nadine McInnis

Reviewed by Lee Kvern

Let me start this book review with genuine kudos to Biblioasis for publishing this beautifully rendered short story collection by Nadine McInnis. She’s not been nominated for the Giller (as of yet, but she should be), nor has she been published in the prestigious New Yorker or some other big time magazine – which is the default explanation given by numerous publishers that reject short story collections over and over.

“Unless you come with your own publicity engine,” the publishers say. (See above: Giller, New Yorker). “Then we simply can’t take a chance on your collection of short stories, however wonderful they may be.”

An old excuse that many of us short story writers are only too familiar with. And yes, we short storiests (new word) understand the precariousness of story collections in terms of viable publishing, especially in light of multinational publishers merging to stay afloat (it’s bunk-up time), or else (sadly) going the way of the dodo bird. Even more so in light of these risky times, I personally thank Biblioasis for taking that risk, that chance on Nadine McInnis’s Blood Secrets. And in turn, so will the reader who gets to experience the fragility of men and women, life, death and everything in-between through the poetic eyes of McInnis. Lucky us.

Blood Secrets opens with a story of accidental meeting, reminiscent of Alice Munro’s stealthy narrative where what is going on surface-wise is never what the story is about. (Slide over on the bench, Ms. Munro; Nadine deserves to sit beside you.) So stealthy is McInnis in giving us the picture at hand in the first offering here, “A Story of Time.” A family witnessing the turn of the century, a cold, packed night out on Parliament Hill complete with crowds and drunks and fireworks, the mother who gets separated from her husband and daughter, swept away, almost trampled by the crowds. The pharmacist she is inadvertently pressed up against in the moving crush of people:

Her chest pushed hard against his chest. She’s glad for their winter coats and hopes he is stronger than he looks. He is about her height, his face strong and tense around the jaw, eyes slightly unfocussed as though he is lost in thought.

“I’m not doing this on purpose, ” Joyce says.

“I know. I’m not doing it either.” He looks at her directly for the first time.

And so begins the narrative that spawns an innocent, caught-up-in-the-moment kiss, that leads to a deeper search and inevitable affair on the part of the mother. In the days that pass the mother reflects on the kiss, then finds herself standing in line at his pharmacy to return his borrowed scarf.

She lined up behind the women who talked to him about birth control, blood thinners, anti-inflammatory drugs and skin creams. But ills and deficiencies had nothing to do with her.

When it was her turn, she said, “You know all our secrets,” and was shocked that he didn’t seem to recognize her with her washed hair loose around her collar, her fearless red mouth. He smiled with recognition once she placed his folded scarf on the counter.

“Only the secrets of the body,” he said.

“Are there any other kind?” she asked.

Fast forward to the grown daughter, the divorced mother, the past and current tension between them, which McInnis handles with a deft hand, her seemingly straightforward words that embody an entire complicated, hidden world.  McInnis is a master of nuance, the unsaid that speaks volumes.

So solid is this collection in both quality and the scope of difficult relationships between mothers and daughters, daughters and fathers, the dying, the dead, the ones left behind to make sense of it all, it’s hard to choose one story over another.

Take for example “Where All The Ladders Start” in which Deirdre, the mother, fresh off a prolonged illness, goes on a grueling rain forest hike with her adult daughter, Zoe (not the same mother and daughter as in the above story, but it could easily be a running narrative, and a theme that plays throughout McInnis’s work).

The story starts out innocently enough, the preparations for the hike, small clues from the past: Deirdre’s lifelong struggle with depression, and how that affects her daughter as a child. As the hike progresses we find out that Deirdre’s father  (Zoe’s grandfather) committed suicide long ago, and how that plays out into the adult relationship and worry for both mother and daughter on the trail.

“Do you know why he did it?” Zoe asks.

“Yes and no.”

Then further on:

But Deirdre does know why and knows whatever the note said, it wouldn’t have held the key to any reason. There is no reason at this point…

“I see it now as a failure of love. His love for us. But also his failure to be able to receive love from anyone. He used to get this look on his face when we were at a restaurant. He’d be watching the people at some other table laughing, having fun, and he would look so sad. He was just a lost soul.”

McInnis writes with such grace, such poetic, lyrical empathy that one is hard pressed not to feel the worries and all-too human tensions and anxieties that blood brings to the collective life table. And yet, you walk away from this stunning, highly- nuanced short story collection, and can’t help but feel you’ve witnessed something utterly moving and profound despite the seemingly straightforward stories written on the pages of McInnis’s Blood Secrets.

Biblioasis | 240 pages |  $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1926845937