Astray by Emma Donoghue

 

Summary (from the publisher): The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.

With rich historical detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from puritan Massachusetts to revolutionary New Jersey, antebellum Louisiana to the Toronto highway, lighting up four centuries of wanderings that have profound echoes in the present. Astray offers us a surprising and moving history for restless times.

Review: This is a collection of short stories about historical "travels to, within, and occasionally from the United States and Canada. Most of these travelers are real people who left traces in the historical record," while a few are imagined by Donoghue (263). They are intriguing stories of elephant tamers, gold miners, prostitutes, and a woman passing as a man in these pages. While most take place in the 1800s, they range and traverse across time from 1639 to 1967. 

It is difficult to review a collected work of short fiction, because of course each can stand on its own. But these stories do have very similar themes. Donoghue said she wrote about "emigrants, immigrants, adventurers, and runaways" because it is fascinating the way "they loiter on the margins, stripped of the markers of family and nation; they're out of place, out of their depth" (263). The characters in the stories all largely do feel on the periphery. None quite fit in or belong. There is a haunting tone to each story. These are not happy tales. In each, the character seems just on the brink of some disaster. 

I really appreciated how each story was based on a nugget of truth, some historical fact plugged from the record that Donoghue uses to spin into a greater tale. At the conclusion of each story, there is a brief note explaining the inspiration and historical basis of each story. I particularly liked the sad tale of the elephant who joined the Barnum circus and the young prostitute who Charles Dickens mentioned in his letters. 

Stars: 4

Related Title: 

• Room by Emma Donoghue