Description:
Movement is the key to this collection. The settings for the stories in "Aquarium" range from metropolis to hamlet, from a Florida retirement community to a northern Ontario reserve on the brink of freeze-up. The people in "Aquarium" are as varied as its locales; the characters are landlords, actors, drinkers, painters, teachers, doctors, steelworkers, fishermen, students, shopkeepers, weathermen, clerks and security guards. Couples are a recurrent theme: the dreams and devices by which lovers join or drift apart.
Review Quotes:
Mike Barnes brings to "Aquarium" a deceptively relaxed precision and a grown-up acceptance of puzzlement as a natural state of mind.'--Bonnie Burnard "citation for Danuta Gleed Literary Award "