I’ve been reading a fair number of short stories so far in 2025 and so, I’ll be honest, within a few days of finishing this collection, it began to blur in my memory with the others. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it. I did, I’m simply having trouble now parsing out which stories were from this book.
What sets them apart from other story collections I’ve recently read is that most of the stories in this book focus on South Asian characters, often immigrants from India to Canada. Many of the stories focus on this transition from one part of the world to another, the vast differences of culture and language and weather. Often a character from one story will pop up in some way in another story, something I always find deeply satisfying in a book like this. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them linked short stories but they clearly all exist in the same universe (maybe even the same neighbourhood).
A lot of the stories are about women, often women whose lives have not taken the path they might have originally expected or chosen. Sometimes this is because of immigration, sometimes health or accidents. Sometimes because of the men in their lives. There is a theme of women finding their homes – whether these are physical places or spiritual .
Karissa Reads Books 
What’s caused you to read so many short stories this year?
It’s just kind of worked out that way. It hasn’t been an intentional thing but it works nicely because I can dip into a short story collection here and there while I’m reading something else.
I’m currently reading a flash fiction collection, and it’s more like dipping in a pinky toe!
The tiniest flavour of a story!
May is short story month! Blame that, I certainly did LOL
You know, I didn’t consciously try to pick short story collections but now I think I was probably influenced by library displays without knowing it!
those librarians know what they’re doing 🙂