Whether we are eavesdropping on the imaginative Saturdays of a Portuguese cleaning lady or living through a divorced woman’s search for the elusive orgasm. Norma Harrs manages in this collection of short stories to absorb the essence of her narrator’s psyche with the clarity of a good actress who gets under the very skin of her characters.
Love, either the absence of or yearning for, is the theme that links that stories in this collection together. Love for a family member, a friend, a lover, or a husband, and sometimes that lack of reciprocity, is the element that gives the stories poignancy and force.
The variety in these stories keeps the reader always guessing. The author doesn’t limit us to the easy answers, but brilliantly provokes us to enlarge our own landscape.

Norma Harrs came to Canada from Ireland as a young woman. She worked in the theatre for a number of years, acting as well as directing. Later, she turned to journalism and was for many years a freelance broadcaster for the CBC. She has written articles for several Canadian newspapers, including The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. After moving from Winnipeg to Toronto, Ms. Harrs began to write plays, several of which have been performed professionally in Canada. Her novel, A Certain State of Mind, was published in 1980, and her previous collection of short stories, Love Minus One & Other Stories, was published by Hounslow Press in 1994. A number of her stories have been recorded by Telstar Records of Great Britain and her work has been broadcast on CBC Radio. Norma has two sons and lives in Toronto with her husband.

Norma Harrs' profile page

"Harrs knows about people and love, and it shows."

Winnipeg Free Press

"There's a wonderfully satisfying sense of the delicate art of eavesdropping."
"Her great strength in short-story writing is perhaps in bringing the talents of journalist and actor to the development of her characters' psyche."

Rod Currie

"Amid the cacophony of experimental writing emanating from Canadian small presses these days, Norma Harris' Love Minus One & Other Stories strikes a distinctive note."

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