That Time a Year by Terence Young

Teddyrose@1

14 years ago

In continuation a reviewing short stories by authors who participated at the 23 Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival, this is a review on a story I read from Terence Young’s latest short story collection, ‘The End of the Ice Age.’

‘That Time of Year’ is about a unnamed couple who go for a swim in the lake by their cabin. It was the last day of the summer. The husband was splashing loudly, near by. The wife saw some owls and asked her husband if he saw them but he did not answer. She hated it when she saw something that no one else has, “to see something wondrous by herself was not to see it at all.”

She asks her husband again, if he saw the owls but there is still no answer and she no longer hears him. She starts to panic an envisioning his death. How she would run to the cabin and call the police and how they wouldn’t search for him until the morning because it was getting too dark.

I won’t tell anymore because I don’t want to risk spoilers. I really liked this story. It was well written and I could picture the landscape and lake the pair were in. I look forward to reading the rest of the collection.