I found Lisa Alward’s “Cocktail” on a visit to Fredericton this past summer. We visited Westminster Books, as well as the phenomenal Lord Beaverbrook Gallery a few blocks away. Published in 2023 by Ontario-based Biblioasis, “Cocktail” was Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and appeared on the Globe and Mail’s “Sixty-Two Books to Read this Fall”. This collection of twelve short stories was an absolute boozy and nostalgic delight to read.
The collection delves into the complex inner lives of relationships, and deftly encapsulates searing and poignant moments in time. Alward effectively infuses each story with rich detail and simmering emotion. Spanning the decadent 1960s to the present, the characters are middle class and sometimes willingly obtuse in navigating their space, but such is the beauty of life. We are welcomed into a world where people see the world through a lens awash in dimmed sepia tones and shag carpeting.
“Hawthorne Yellow” is an intricately woven tale in which we feel the humid tension building between a house painter, a young couple and the things an old house can hide. Such is Alward’s ability and precision in capturing the emotion in a short period of time.
The characters face the regular upheavals that come with having relationships, and the way desire can be more of a haunting as in the title story, “Cocktail”.
Lisa Alward’s “Cocktail” has earned well-deserved critical acclaim. The characters and sense of them lingers long after reading the collection.
Recommended to lovers of short fiction, readers who enjoy emotionally detailed and rich literary fiction. Written from a feminist perspective, “Cocktail” explores themes of love, loss, redemption, female anger, social expectations and concepts of motherhood. Available at all fine retailers, but most especially at a local independent seller.
Joy Reads Books 
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