About the Author
Natalee Caple launched her Canadian literary career in 1998 with her debut story collection The Heart Is Its Own Reason, which captured the attention of the New York Times Book Review and garnered high international praise. She is the author of one previous novel, The Plight of Happy People in an Ordinary World, as well as a collection of poetry entitled A More Tender Ocean and coeditor of The Notebook: Interviews and New Fiction from Contemporary Writers. Mackerel Sky is her American debut.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
There was a time when I thought a great deal about money. Then one day instead of going to my office I visited the aquarium. I found myself standing in front of a tank, staring at the seahorses hovering beneath the exit sign. Their spiny, white bodies looked like question marks carved out of ice, suspended in the seaweed behind the dirty glass. A sign under the tank said that it is the male seahorse who becomes pregnant after sex. And then, in just a little while, they release tiny, glassy replicas of their own bodies from a swollen pocket on their bellies. I stared at one obvious pregnant steed and I thought to myself, I don't know anything about the world. I don't know anything.
Copyright 2004 by Natalee Caple
