The Third Person by Emily Anglin

The nine short stories in Emily Anglin’s debut collection, The Third Person, are tense. Each begins slowly, at a careful, unhurried pace until abruptly the charac-

ters—engaged in a professional or friendly exchange—are disrupted by a third person, often in an unnerving way. Anglin, a Toronto-based writer, excels in creating prosaic “microworlds” that emit familiarity. Whether her characters dwell inside a dimly lit two-storey apartment or work on a university campus, readers will feel as though they’ve been there before. These characters exude normalcy, working dull, sometimes precarious, jobs. Among them is a communications professional, a transcriber, and a professional development resources coordinator. Mirroring everyday life, The Third Person explores the uncomfortable and often unwelcome ways in which worlds can be interrupted swiftly, with both minor and major consequences. For example, in Anglin’s story “Inside City Hall,” a frequent anonymous caller inserts herself into a human resource professional’s life. However, this interruption isn’t limited to each phone call. The employee’s daily thoughts and routines become untethered. In another story, also called “The Third Person,” a transcriber feels distracted because of “the seemingly imminent appearance of a third person in the room,” as she drinks wine with a neighbour who talks almost obsessively of her son. What is most memorable about The Third Person is Anglin’s simple, unvarnished language. Her sentences are stripped bare, never burdened by unnecessary details. Her matter-of-fact tone in sentences such as, “Upstairs in my own apartment I fell into bed and was asleep within minutes,” contribute to the book’s overall sense of unease. In each unpredictable, finely crafted story, readers know that the plot is about to unravel, but they will rarely know when or how. Little is pristine in The Third Person. Unreliable narrators and untidy endings prove that the stories in this remarkable collection are more nuanced than Anglin’s uncluttered prose suggests. Readers can’t help but feel empathy for characters who are, on the surface, uninteresting, but subtly complex. Rooted in a sort of uncomfortable realism, The Third Person explores small, seemingly inconsequential interactions that can quickly agitate or obstruct one’s

daily life. Anglin masterfully draws on the familiar, creating worlds that readers will quickly identify, until these worlds begin to fall apart. Anglin’s controlled yet nuanced voice is refreshing, and a welcome addition to the short story genre. Jessica Rose