Seven Openings of the Head
Liane Keightley
October 2007
ISBN 1-894994-24-8 / 978-1-894994-24-8
Short Stories
4x7 inches, 128 pages
$15

Seven Openings of the Head is a collection of stories set primarily in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. Amid a landscape of train tracks, rural roads and lakes, men and women wrestle with the subtleties of emotional entanglement and isolation. Wryly funny and richly empathetic, these stories explore the murky terrain of both familial and romantic love.

"Keightley's choices as a storyteller are uniquely hers: shrewd, risky, quirky but never gratuitous, and often quietly revelatory…. Sharp close-ups abound: greasy hair stuck to a forehead, a squirting soap dispenser, plaster dust on sweaty skin, needlepoint orchids that "look like wasps." And smells: fried onions, butterscotch Life Savers, corn stalks on a hot August night. These and other sensory triggers are carefully chosen, funnelling meaning from the events around them…. Keightley's vision is inspired and entirely fresh. She may be too ineffably odd to score with word-weary prize juries just hoping for the brilliantly recognizable — but I hope I'm wrong." — The Globe and Mail

Liane Keightley's stories have been published in Matrix, The Moosehead Anthology, Ribsauce, and You and Your Bright Ideas: New Montreal Writing. Her story "Ten Cent Packs" was one of the first conundrum press chapbooks. She is a graduate of Concordia University’s Creative Writing program, and was an invited participant to the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She lives and writes in Montreal but can frequently be found swimming in Lake Orford, in Quebec's Eastern Townships.