The lyrical and precise stories in The Garden of Earthly Intimacies achieve an intensity that touches on the rhapsodic. Few characters in recent Canadian fiction are as responsive to the sensual richness of the world as the women who inhabit these beautifully transparent stories. Whether they’re stepping into a warm bath recently abandoned by an elusive, imaginary lover, or stepping onto the pure whiteness of an isolated Mexican beach, the women in Meeka Walsh’s fictional garden carry themselves forward in a glistening exquisite dance.
These stories also tell, with uncanny accuracy, of the closeness between human and animal worlds. Leopard cousins, hieratic iguanas and a dog like a gazelle occupy the same active and emotional space as the humans encountered by the reader. In what has been described as break-through writing, Meeka Walsh writes in a celebratory way about her own body, and her narrators take from their womanly beings fierce and delicate imprints for lives lived with quiet but uncompromising passion.