‘Oh, My Darling’ by Shaena Lambert

Reviewed by Charlene Van Buekenhout

I was suspicious of this book at first, with its beautiful blue sky cover and foreboding black crows. Fuelling my suspicions was the very first line in the first story: “Hello, Vanessa.” Oh dear, is this going to be some light coming of age story filled with flowery language and romantic trysts at the cafe? That first story also gives its title to this collection of ten short stories by Shaena Lambert. This particular story is written in the second person, which is also suspicious as I feared it might be a love letter or some tale waxing on about Vanessa’s various attributes.

But by the time I got to the end of the quick and curious read, I was on board. Unsettled and creeped out, but completely drawn in by the vivid ordinary scenes with hints of something more, egging me to read on and uncover the mysteries. I started the second story, and to my surprise it was nothing like the previous one, yet it contained the same mysterious quality as the first, in a different way. And so on, and so on, each story in this collection bringing a completely new and unpredictable adventure full of frightening, sad and jubilant realizations.  Lambert takes us across Canada, overseas, backward in time and right inside ourselves in a whirlwind of curiosity and pleasure. There are some similarities between the stories that show up, most notably in the characters, though only those human qualities that Lambert describes so pointedly and accurately, and in her style of writing which is recognizable even where the story and plot differ markedly.

In “The Cage” we are led down the garden path a bit with a story about Manfred, a Greenpeace worker and activist. He is on his way to lock himself inside a cage outside of the aquarium to protest the captivity of dolphins and whales. His wife, Leila, of thirty-three years takes care of the technical details, for example: calling the media, driving to the aquarium with food she has prepared for him. For a good portion of the story, we are embroiled in Manfred and Leila’s existence as per his lifestyle, but an interesting thing happens part way through, and we are led towards Leila’s inner character outside of Manfred.

The way in which Lambert accomplishes this in her writing is subtle, but not confusing.  Beginning with a brief Manfred perspective, the voice then becomes Leila’s but one that collectively expresses their relationship, then Leila’s voice becomes stronger and we see Manfred through Leila’s eyes, and finally, Leila as herself. At the end of the tale, we don’t receive a satisfactory conclusion to the aquarium stunt or a tidy bow on what the story started out as, but carved out of the information and experiences we had been a party to, appears a genuine moment that, as a reader, made me understand exactly what the story was about.

Many of the stories follow this path of realization for the reader and for the characters. The ones that worked the best for me, where I thought Lambert’s talent at telling a personal, raw and clever story with careful yet impactful word choices that shock you out of your comfortable reading state, were those with female voices. There are a few stories with male perspectives that are interesting, and don’t get me wrong, have some of the most memorable, lasting images, and complicated character and setting choices that no doubt came with a heavy amount of research (“Little Bird,” “The Coffin Story”) which I enjoyed, but didn’t feel penetrated as deeply and sharply into the character’s psyche and beings as did the female centred pieces. It pains me slightly to give such a gendered opinion, but I do think that those particular stories about women offered a heightened experience that the few others, although they made up for it in more exotic settings, circumstance, and detail did not quite reach.

One of the gems in this collection (although, flipping back it is hard to pick an absolute favourite) is “A Small Haunting” and yes, I’m a sucker for a ghost story, but it is more than that, and not exactly that. There is some really surprising and accurate storytelling at play here. The story follows a few days in Anna’s life.  She has two children, a husband, a house, a career as an illustrator. She is a descendent of Polish immigrants who knew starvation but, in the new country and in their new lives, are now in a time of feast. Anna is being haunted by a child, and the haunting has come on quickly and has increased in intensity.

Anna reached her house, she could feel the child on the other side of the door, pressed close, waiting. ‘I’m coming in.’ Anna’s heart hammered, sounding like a giant’s footsteps in her ears.  On the other side, the creature held a pair of pointed nail scissors. Sallow face, green mouth, hollow below the ribs.

I had to stop reading for a moment because the image was so real. What ghost carries nail scissors? That’s the kind of detail that you can’t just make up and it’s that realistic detail that grounds every story in this collection, whether it be about a Nazi father faced with the realities shown him by his gay son; a mother coping with the death of her teenage son by overdose; a former lover, now older, obsessing over the youthful, idealized image his dying lover holds on to; or a seemingly selfless friend and the one childish act that comes with dire consequences.