Bridge in the Rain

BiancaLakoseljac's collection of stories Bridge in the Rain, linked by an inscription on a bench in High Park, is precise and elegant, shot through with the element of surprise as she gently but firmly pushes the boundaries between reality and the supernatural: a narrator becomes a sperm-donor substitute for Vincent van Gogh, and his fate converges with the mad painter's through the barrel of a revolver; a blow-up doll becomes The Perfect Woman and resolves narrator Lila's tedious marriage; a little girl is befriended by the characters in her books. In this delightful collection, Bianca has found her literary voice in the ordinariness of lives touched and transformed by magic -- Elizabeth Abbott