A Touch of Elegance by Charlotte Musial

Boularderie Island Press

ISBN: 978-1-926448-48-0

$20.95

A Touch of Elegance is a lavish collection of heart-warming, witty, sometimes mystical tales of love and loss, betrayal and redemption…and other angst-ridden issues of the human condition. Take young Willow, for instance, whose elegant dinner party takes a decidedly inelegant turn when her aging hippie parents show up uninvited. Or Ben, the hero of Saving Face…and Other Parts, who meets Margot, a new neighbour, whose mystique leaks through the picket fence separating their backyards; Ben learns a lot from Margot…not the least of which is how to cook a turkey with giblets. What’s in a Name spotlights the author’s whimsical sense of humour when Mary Lizzie, wife of Rory for over sixty years and mother of his six children, propelled by one final insult to her life’s work, almost decapitates him with a well-aimed meat cleaver. But there’s more. The author has cleverly linked each of her stories with lyric, narrative and dramatic works of poetry that complement the themes of her short fiction, and offer to readers an ever-present background murmur of life by the sea. In Ode to an Oyster, she comically chastises an oyster for being…well…an oyster.

Charlotte Musial is the author of the poetry collection The Night Life of Chairs. She was born in Scotchtown, Cape Breton. She graduated St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing with an RN diploma, and for many years she practised as a member of the Registered Nurses Association of Nova Scotia. Later, she graduated CBU with a BA and taught essay writing, grammar, and comprehension at that institution. Charlotte’s personal essays, features, short fiction, and poetry have found homes in local, regional, and national venues. These include The Cape Bretoner, The Atlantic Advocate, Pottersfield Portfolio, Canadian Writers Journal, and, more recently, as short fiction in anthologies published by The Nashwaak Review (St. Thomas University Press), Thirteen Ways from Sunday (Boularderie Island Press), Grey Area: 13 Ghost Stories (Third Person Press), and Breton Books.