The Left-Handed Dinner Party and Other Stories

[T]he vividness of Coulter’s hard-luck characters and their situations commands attention. For the second half, Coulter changes tracks with two longer stories that experiment with tone, structure, and perspective. “The Smart Sisters” is a rollicking depiction of three struggling sisters.... “Limbo,” narrated by a “reluctant haunter”...is divided into six captivating tales that recount the decades after his death for those close to him. Gentle, comic, and uplifting, the story’s craft perfectly complements its humanity and skillfully closes this promising collection." [Full review at https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-77212-328-9] * Publishers Weekly *
# 1 on Edmonton Fiction Bestsellers list, September 24, 2017
“… this collection reads a bit like a mystery novel with subtle connections between characters and stories…told intriguingly and effectively…” -- Breanna Mroczek * Avenue Magazine *
The way Coulter uses the short story medium to loosely tie the collection together adds an enthralling quality... Coulter wanted to showcase that the things which tear us apart — depression, anger, death, suicide — are seldom talked about, or even written about... The Left-Handed Dinner Party ends on a note of fleeting happiness that alludes to a place of resolution." [Full article at https://www.thegatewayonline.ca/2018/03/left-handed-dinner-party/] -- Enrique Marroquin * The Gateway *
"What interests Coulter is families, and the endlessly paradoxical combinations of love and resentment, security and entrapment, which families offer. Some of the stories are connected by their characters, and the novella, “Limbo,” consists of a series of stories about the same family. Alcoholism, adultery, abuse, parental abandonment, trips into an uncertain future, suicide, secrecy, car crashes, sibling alienation—these are the stock-in-trade of Coulter’s families." [Full review at http://canlit.ca/article/space-and-time/] -- Paul Denham * Canadian Literature 236 *