Three and a Half Deaths: Short Reads

Description

An accident, a suicide, an act of criminal negligence… and a near-death experience. These stories – set in France, the USA and Canada – bring together calamities from two centuries.
What the Driver Saw is inspired by a freak accident on Nice’s Promenade des Anglais, the 1920s equivalent of Princess Diana’s last ride through Paris. The Trap takes us to New York, 1878, when a woman at the centre of a public scandal decides that she’s finally had enough. Any thinking about death must of course include its lingering effects on the living; Sissy explores the guilt and culpability of a survivor, whose young sister died in the 1840s in London, Ontario. Finally, Fall is about an incident at Niagara Falls in 1901 when a middle-aged schoolteacher decided to stake her whole future on an act so daring it could be called suicidal. A near-death, a sort of rebirth: the kind of moment that makes visible the discreet courage it takes to live a whole life.

Author Information

Born in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish writer who spent eight years in England before moving to Canada. Her fiction includes includes Slammerkin, Life Mask, Touchy Subjects and the international bestseller Room (shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes).