`It's not often Alice Munro offers a quote to promote an emerging writer, but after delving into the pages of Emma's Hands, Mary Swan's stellar first collection of short stories, it's easy to see why Munro wants people to stand up and notice. Swan is a first-class writer. Small children, dead relatives, and memories populate her stories, as Swan pays tribute to all the senses contained in remembering. ... Swan's gift lies in her ability to produce succinct, poetic lines that immediately transport the reader to a memory so vibrant it feels like home. Her deft handling of emotions is as welcome as loving arms, reminding the reader that comfort is as vital to life as air. Her brilliant opening lines linger in the mind -- hopeful and portentous -- ushering the reader forward in anticipation.'
(Elizabeth Mitchell
Quill and Quire )
`... Swan's prose is not imposed conspicuously upon her subject but arises naturally and appropriately from it. Her protagonists are invariably women, most often mature women looking back on incidents in their lives whose significance they now understand for the first time. Swan's prose is clear, even limpid, reminiscent of the seemingly simple but highly sophisticated art of Ethel Wilson.'
(W J Keith
Canadian Book Review Annual )
`Mary Swan's first book, a novella entitled The Deep (2002), revealed the same qualities that are evident here. I have no hesitation in hailing her as the most gifted new Canadian prose writer to have appeared on the scene for many years. But the key, I repeat, is in the style. These stories must be listened to; every word must be savoured. An exceptional talent is on display here.'
(W J Keith
Canadian Book Review Annual )
`Toronto's far west corner plays host to high-end condos, low-end motels, a swimming palace, an abandoned dance hall. As well, it is the starting point of a weekly walk, a jaunt of mine, to the downtown core. Of course, there is the lake the reason such far-thinking developers built such attractions in the first place. The lake, this lake, is never the same lake twice. Silver with sunlight, dark and foreboding, the surface calm then rough. A new collection, Emma's Hands, is reminiscent of this land, this water. ... In Swan's two decades of writing, she has produced little more than a dozen short stories. I imagine the first, second, third renderings; the yellowed papers between. I say this because it is there in the retelling, the deftly nuanced prose. These character-driven pieces typically relate on two levels at once: documented day-to-day minutiae contrasted with, and often accompanied by, a deeper psychological truth surfaced in dreams, memories, epiphanies.'
(Maggie Mortimer
Globe & Mail )
`The narrative is electrified by [an] audacious double voice, along with an equally audacious structural complexity. Swift movements through time and space and shifts in perspective among a small army of supporting characters might easily have led to confusion. Yet the care and control of Swan's writing, the sustained patterns of her imagery and the sheer beauty of her prose clarify everything that is essential to the story while preserving its central mystery.'
(Andrea Barrett
The New York Times )
`There is something sexy about the alienating elegance of Swan's prose. Terrible events at the battlefront are referred to alongside ordinary events in hotels and bars. But it is the objects, the materials of daily life, that get the most attention.'
(Natalee Caple
eye )
`Although Swan shows a rare talent for filling in the deep shadows of memory and the past, these stories are neither sad nor funereal, but exciting. They're like listening, for the very first time, to the story of a friend's life, when everything seens fresh.'
(Nancy Wigston
Toronto Star )
