Finalist for the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award

Myth, folklore, and magic permeate the stories in Marianne Micros' collection Eye. Set in ancient and modern Greece, and in contemporary Europe and North America, these tales tell of evil-eye curses, women healers, ghosts, a changeling, and people struggling to retain or gain power in a world of changing beliefs. Here you will find stories of a nymph transformed into a heifer, a young soldier who returns home to discover that his brother is a changeling, an ancient temple uncovered during the construction of a church, a betrayed woman lost in a labyrinth, a wise woman confronting changes to her position when modern technology comes to her village. Some stories show that people still seek refuge in myth and folk beliefs; the ways of the past are not gone. The paving of a village does not destroy the power of the evil eye or the ability to repel it. A temple in honour of the old gods comes again to the surface. An unfinished musical composition for piano magically completes itself whenever it is played.

Marianne Micros, in her story collection Eye and other writings, explores the mythology, folklore, Greek customs, and old-world cultures. Her previous publications include two poetry collections: Upstairs Over the Ice Cream (Ergo); and Seventeen Trees (Guernica); and poems and short fiction in anthologies and journals. She has also published scholarly articles on Renaissance and contemporary subjects and a bibliographical monograph on Al Purdy. Marianne’s suite of poems Demeter’s Daughters was shortlisted for the Gwendolyn MacEwen poetry competition in 2015 and published in Exile: The Literary Quarterly. Having retired as an English professor at the University of Guelph, Marianne is currently compiling new poems into a book and working on a second collection of stories.

Marianne Micros' profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General's Award for Fiction (Short-listed)
• Short-listed, Danuta Gleed Literary Award (Short-listed)

Eye by Marianne Micros is a satisfying and thought-provoking experience. You get a sense of the melding of different cultures and different eras in a new form.

Andrew Blackman