The motives that compel a writer to create very short fiction are various, but whatever the reason for a story’s length, one rule remains constant: the fewer the words, the more crucial each one becomes. In the absence of space in which to leisurely draw out the truths of their characters and situations, writers of very short fiction can open up echoing depths of meaning with the careful insertion of odd but perfect, unexpected details.

Most of the stories in Pull Gently, Tear Here, Toronto poet Alexandra Leggat’s first collection of short fiction, are two to three pages long. The book’s two longest stories extend to a mere six pages. Despite their compactness, though, the 34 stories in this collection display a surprising slackness.

Leggat’s stories centre on women leading unfulfilling lives, having unsatisfying, sometimes abusive relationships, being at the mercy of cruel existential forces. The march from one joyless, desperate life to another feels forced, if only because Leggat consistently fails to provide anything in her language and imagery that jars the reader into involuntary understanding. The insights she gives are flat and hackneyed: sentences like “He’s racing against time” and “She starts singing like a chorus of angels” are far too common.

Alexandra Leggat is clearly a writer who understands how a story should look and feel. All of the stories here are skilfully constructed and internally consistent – no small feat. Her difficulty is in being unable to truly enter and specifically illuminate these sad lives.