Minor Planet for You (A)

Told with arresting candor, Leslie Greentree’s short fiction creates the satisfying sense of discovering someone’s long-kept secret, or the guilty pleasure of overhearing a scathing conversation. A housewife indulges in monthly purchases of specialty vinegar and savours her romantic fantasies about the local grocery store manager; a daughter catches glimpses of herself in the face of her mother’s suffocating attentions; a minor astronomer accumulates star charts and wasted nights rather than tender moments with his wife. A Minor Planet for You explores the often wry, sometimes dark but consistently fragile constellations of human relationships.