Traplines: Stories

Only 28, the Canadian author Eden Robinson writes blood-curdling prose in a deadpan, unsparing voice that gives her stories a disturbing quality. Most of these tales take place in British Columbia, where the vast tracts of forest and small suburban enclaves apparently give the residents a large dose of madness and mayhem. The narrator in "Dogs in Winter" is the daughter of a serial-killer mom, who painfully recreates her horrific childhood. Tom, in "Contact Sports," welcomes the arrival of his eccentric but generous cousin Jeremy, only to discover that Jeremy is a maniacal tyrant with sadistic tendencies. Robinson treads the thin line between shocking modernist terror and prurient bloody fantasy in these stories. In the gorgeous northwestern woods, her violent characters stand out like drops of blood in snow.