SOURCE: "Economy of the Moment," in Books in Canada, Vol. XIX, No. 6, August, 1990, pp. 28-29.

In the following review of The Wild Blue Yonder, Scanlan notes Thomas's ability to capture intimate and sometimes painful moments in human relationships.

Five years ago someone asked Audrey Thomas if at the age of 50 she had reached her peak as a writer. She coyly wondered if her questioner meant pique, or perhaps peek, and went on to blame her father—who would say, "What's for dinner: Mother?"—for the awful puns, word play, and curiosity about language that mark both her fiction and her conversation. Thomas will disinter old jokes and word games, offering them up to her readers in the most curious places, like commercial breaks in the middle of a human sacrifice.

In her new collection of short fiction, The Wild Blue Yonder, Thomas continues to examine the death of...