I am thrilled to make this list, along with some of my own favourite writers: Lynn Coady, Douglas Glover, Russell Smith and Bill Gaston. Alex Good and Steven W. Beattie write:
Another sometime novelist (her new novel, The Sky is Falling, is out in September), Adderson is one of this country’s best – and least heralded – short-story writers. Like Lisa Moore, Adderson’s stories have been characterized as “difficult” by people groomed to expect some neat moral at the close, or some clever twist à la Poe or Maupassant. Adderson, who rightly acknowledges that stories are closer in spirit to poetry than to novels, is more interested in language than in traditional notions of plot or character development; her stories are small stylistic masterpieces. Never showy or ornate, they epitomize Jonathan Swift’s prescription for good writing: “Proper words in proper places.” Although in Adderson’s case, the word “proper” should be understood as “unexpected and delightful.”