SOURCE: A review of Goodbye Harold, Good Luck, in The Canadian Forum, Vol. LXVI, No. 761, August-September, 1986, pp. 34-5.

In the following review, Hatch identifies strengths and weaknesses in the collection Goodbye, Harold, Good Luck.

In the introduction to her new collection of short stories, Goodbye Harold, Good Luck, Audrey Thomas comments that although she thinks of herself as a novelist her readers often prefer her short stories. The reason for this preference is obvious. With the exception of Songs My Mother Taught Me and Munchmeyer, Thomas' novels experiment radically with both form and subject matter. Mrs. Blood, Blown Figures, Latakia and Intertidal Life dissolve plot and linearity to portray fleeting moments of subjectivity in their encounter with the seemingly fixed forms of the external world. However, in her short stories in collections such as Ten Green Bottles, Ladies and Escorts, and Real Mothers, Thomas tends to work within...