Margaret Lives in the Basement

By Michelle Berry

Michelle Berry has one of the most darkly playful and unique voices in Canadian literature and her second collection of short stories, Margaret Lives in the Basement is no exception. At its heart are characters full of longing, trapped by circumstance and unable to reach out or connect with one another. Whether it's Margaret in the basement and her neighbours above, or two couples working out their family melodramas over dinner, there is always the presence of others but rarely a connection between them. By twists and turns Berry subverts what we know to be normal and arrives at something, though strange, more real than we like to admit.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0888014295
• ISBN13: 9780888014290
• Release Date: July 2013
• Publisher: Turnstone Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Superb

I read this collection of short stories when I was about 14 years old. At that time in my life, a compendium of depressing tales was probably the last thing I needed, but they were so fascinating and bizarre I couldn't put the book down. I mean, who wants to read stories about boring average people who have no personal demons, no monkeys on their backs, no crosses to bear? Nobody. What makes characters interesting (amongst others things) are their challenges and the attitudes they take towards them. Berry's characters aren't heroes and rarely overcome their demons, but this is the point: real people usually aren't heroes either. More often than not, we carry our crosses and our burdens, in some part, throughout the course of our lives. Either way, this book is grossly underrated. Read it!