This collection is a brilliant example of the versatility and vast potential of the short story form.

Barbara Sibbald’s probing, sympathetic, and quietly graceful short stories are collected in The Museum of Possibilities.

The Ottawa-based Sibbald has been an editor, a journalist, and the author of novels, and the stories gathered in The Museum of Possibilities are representative of both her writing skills and her experience, spanning more than two decades of her work.

Divided thematically into three parts, the book begins with the title story, in which a man visiting a hoarder gains glimpses of what might have been in his own life. The collection gains steam, as the stories that follow fully embrace Sibbald’s greatest strength-intimately inhabiting her characters.

The complicated friendship, combined with elements of unacknowledged love, depicted in “Places We Cannot Go” is utterly convincing and affecting. Sibbald is also inventive, as demonstrated in the standout “Things We Hold Dear,” which shows the thoughts of a character in a story intercut with those of the reader of that story. The two women are revealed as parallels, as the fictional reader comments on the character:

She believes she’s found solace in others. But now that she understands the narrowness of the contract, can she continue? It is a question I settled for myself long ago, propelled by Phillip, of course, but still… We have to make our peace or be consumed by the quest.

Part two of the book, called `Dispatches from Madawan,’ shows off Sibbald’s wit with several sly and often satirical three- or four-page glimpses into the lives of denizens of Madawan, Ontario. But Sibbald always manages a kind of elegant subtlety, and she never sacrifices a deeper point on the altar of humor.

Part three marks another highlight: the five stories that profile a single character, Wanda, beginning at age eight and continuing through her adult life. Here, Sibbald allows a view of family dysfunction through the eyes of a child, a preteen, and later, an adult, in convincing voice each time. The saga culminates in the story `The Normal Blur of Myopia,’ in which an eye degeneration forces Wanda to truly see the nature of her own personal life.

Sibbald has a deft and delicate touch in bringing her characters to life-small details regularly reveal larger truths. The Museum of Possibilities stands not just as an excellent introduction to Sibbald’s writing or a handsome and convenient collection of some of her best work in fiction-it’s also a brilliant example of the versatility and vast potential of the short story form.

`In spite of my usual preference for a more lengthy narrative, I found the stories in The Museum of Possibilities highly entertaining, being tightly constructed and inventive, and featuring unsparing observation of the human condition in its mundane failures, though these are recounted with a dark and witty relish.’

`How do you prefer short story: black, creamy, double-double? The Museum of Possibilities serves this up and more. From the exhibits we can learn so much, for instance how to haunt dreams with technology, and how butter truly is the way to a man’s heart. The collection offers a range from the darkly funny to the tangibly realistic. Unlike many museums where you can set your own itinerary, I recommend you take the guided tour and read the collection from start to finish.’

`Sibbald’s prose is succinct and sharp, which you would expect from a career journalist. What she also exhibits, in every story, is a storyteller’s grasp of momentum, a keen understanding of character and voice, and a knack for authentic dialogue. Each of her protagonists’ voices is distinct over the course of sixteen narratives. Add to this the diversity of content, structure and tone, and The Museum of Possibilities is a gallery worth visiting and revisiting.’

`Sibbald’s stories are witty, clever, creepy and sometimes deeply emotional. The voices of her characters are strong, especially Wanda, a child of an air force family who appears in a series of linked stories in part three of the book. Sibbald nails an increasingly disaffected, strange young girl who becomes a stranger teenager.’

`This is a book to be cherished, placed on a bedside table and to be read intermittently, but only one story at a time. Each tale, even the short ones, leaves you exhausted from the intensity. Recovery time is necessary before starting the next one.’

`There is nothing predictable or déjà vu about any of these stories-neither the subject matter nor the story line, and especially not the endings, which are surprising and always leave you pondering. Just as original are the array of characters that populate the stories. Drawn with such insight and sensitivity, one is pulled right under their skin and into the soul of every one of them.’

`In her short story anthology, The Museum of Possibilities, Canadian author Barbara Sibbald showcases sixteen shadow-box narratives in the form of short, succinct, concentrated scenes depicting complicated relationships, strong emotions and hard consequences. Quirky, absorbing, deftly crafted, entertaining, memorable, The Museum of Possibilities is very highly recommended for personal reading lists, as well as community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections.