Naming the Shadows
Sharon Berg
The Porcupine’s Quill (2019)
Review by Irina Moga
Sharon Berg’s collection of short stories Naming the Shadows (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2019) is the author’s first book of fiction and another milestone in her writing career. Based in Sarnia, Ontario, Sharon Berg is a well-known figure in the Canadian literary community as a poet, fiction and non-fiction writer and editor of the Big Pond Rumours literary magazine.
Within the span of eleven short stories, Naming the Shadows captures reverberations of experiences and chronicles the coming-of-age of characters whose vignettes sometimes traverse more than one story.
“Every story deals with something out of my own life, you know. I think it’s that way for most authors,” notes a character in the short story “Seeing Clearly”, who is a writer herself. Such mise en abîme moments, which surface in the volume, point to the author’s knack for transforming memories into storylines which mix humour and understated drama in their plots.
While the short stories in Naming the Shadows vary in terms of technique, setting and characters, the narratives appear to converge towards a similar vanishing point: liberating perspectives for the characters in the book, which are gained through self-reflection and the affirmation of personal values.
A quote from Carl Jung, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious,” which is meant to be both a preamble and an allusion to the book’s title, leads the reader into the labyrinth of light and shadows from which the characters and their journey take shape.
Sharon Berg sifts through the many voices and layers of memories, in all their intricacies and hiatuses to develop the canvas against which she pins the stories in Naming the Shadows.
In the short story “Rappings”, the conduit of the story is a blend of fantastic fiction and poetic analogies; in “How Many Times” an alter ego of the author, cast as a “concerned citizen” takes a stance on domestic violence. In “Violet Light”, the narrative takes us back to the times of the French Impressionist movement and in the “Power of Names” the undercurrent of First Nations lore can be felt, as this story revolves around the hidden power of names.
In the short story “The Power of Names”, it is the writer’s turn to summarize the bedrock that nurtures the emergence of literary threads: an author, similar to a photographer, is a collector of moments and states, fused together through the power of emotions and sensorial perceptions:
“It is not for art or even for family history that he does this, it is for the collection. He is assembling some image of himself within the gestalt consciousness, his photo albums a jigsaw portrait recording his passing through a variety of landscapes, various groupings of people.”
Vivid images, in which the author’s poetic inclinations can be traced, are omnipresent in Naming the Shadows:
“I was the mousy foil for your brilliance, the necessary background to buoy you … just as the denser surface molecules of water’s skin support a beach toy, allowing it to float.” (from “Rappings”)
The backdrop of the short stories resonates with familiar landscapes and scenes: a visit to the mall or a bookstore illuminated by the amber reflection of stained glass; walking the dog, or piecing together a jigsaw puzzle with family members. In this seemingly uneventful universe the drama of human lives unfurls, depicted with a dose of wit and an unmistakably Canadian affability.
We can hear the writer’s own opinions, barely dissimulated through the characters’ utterances or musings throughout the book. It’s likely a deliberate ingredient in Sharon Berg’s prose, meant to convey the author’s larger messages on life. However, at times the author’s focus on conveying a particular message took away from the fluidity of the stories. The author appears comfortable with this approach; we get the sense that Sharon Berg’s intent is to write a different kind of fiction – one that does not bow to prescribed patterns and takes its cue from the writer’s own feelings and creativity. Embedded in the fabric of her fiction is a commentary on the women’s place in the world.
The book’s front cover, a reproduction of an intriguing painting by Liana Russwurm is a perfect match to the themes of the volume: a young puppeteer pulls the strings of an old puppet while striking a Jovian pose. It’s a haunting image that is likely to fire up readers’ imaginations as they work their way through the short story collection and attempt to connect the symbolism of the painting to the contents of the paperback.
Naming the Shadows by Sharon Berg is a gratifying book. It invites the reader to move through its pages at a leisurely pace, taking in the characters’ experiences, their ruminations and the events that unfold; the finesse of the words that make up the prose adds to the experience.
Irina Moga is Romanian-born and published two poetry books in Romanian. Pictopoems illustrated by Tatiana Arsénie, was released in 2018. Her poetry has appeared in literary magazines such as Canadian Literature, carte-blanche, dandelion, Rockhurst Review, and The Chaffin Journal. Irina is a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC). Web http://www.irinamoga.com; Twitter: @pictopoems