A House Full of Strangers: Stories by Diana Stevan
“My short story collection is drawn from my memories and imagination.”
Back in the mid-eighties, I was a rooming house resident on two different occasions, in two very different places, the first in a small Ontario town, the other in West-End Toronto. Each time was only for a few months, but it was a singular experience for a young man out on his own for the first time.
Those rooming house days were fully brought back to me by Diana Stevan’s A House Full of Strangers, a collection of (for the most part) interconnected stories centred around John & Anna’s rooming house in Winnipeg in the 1940s and 1950s. Their young daughter Sonia and Anna’s mother Zoya also live with them. John has an occupation outside the house, so the day-to-day running of the rooming house is taken care of by Anna.
Most, but not all the stories take place in John and Anna’s house.
The first story, “Something in the Blood” has Irene returning to her mother’s rooming house as her husband Nick is too sick to work, and they have two small boys to raise. Irene is not keen on returning, but financially, they have no options. Once they arrive, and Nick gets settled and gets the medical attention he needs, the home becomes a place of healing, and not just for Nick. Family is everything, especially in the close-knit Ukrainian community in Winnipeg.
We then get introduced to John and Anna in the second story, “Ihor’s Escape”. Ihor is a cousin of Anna’s who has fled Eastern Europe to come to Canada, where he hopes to find a less homophobic environment. His sexuality is a still a secret from his family, and they do their best to play matchmaker with available Ukrainian women from the community. Eventually, they desist, assuming he’s content with being a bachelor.
Alone in his room, far from his home country, but safe with family, Ihor contemplates his new circumstances:
Ihor placed his suitcase on the narrow bed then sat down to gather his thoughts. His cousin said that she and John had just finished wallpapering the small room the week before he arrived. It had a closet and a walnut bureau with an oval mirror in the corner—plenty of room for his meagre belongings. A green glass lamp on the night table would serve him well for evening reading, if he could find some good Ukrainian books. At the end of the hall was a bathroom, with a sink toilet and tub he’d share with the other roomers—better than the outhouse his family still used in their village.
At the thought of his mother leading such a hard life he heaved a sigh and glanced out the tall window by his bed. It overlooked the main street, where he could see the little girl—who he’d learned was Sonia, Anna and John’s four-year-old daughter—playing with a boy her size. They were on the boulevard, riding their tricycles up and down the main sidewalk—such an innocent activity. There were no soldiers on the streets. No hidden explosives to worry about. No damaged buildings to remind you of the bombs that had fallen or how you had to flee to escape harm. He had to admit he was in shock. To be in a country that hadn’t seen war on its doorstep was hard to fathom. He felt he’d escaped through some fantasy opening and come out onto a little piece of heaven. (pg 72)
Nevertheless, intrusive thoughts and nightmares still plague Ihor despite the safety of his little room.
I thoroughly enjoy reading short stories that are interconnected with other stories in the collection. Recently, M. V. Feehan did this to great effect in her compilation, In the Shadow of Crows, and so does Ms. Stevan here. When I was reading through it, I didn’t always make a connection (apart from the obvious, such as the same characters). For example, in “Better Late Than Never” the story is told from young Sonia’s point of view. It’s Christmas Eve and all the roomers have gone to visit family or friends, except “the roomer, who had no one to spend Christmas Eve with…clomping up the stairs to his small room on the second floor, where I supposed he’d be sitting alone.” It’s a few stories later, in “The Promise” that we find out who this lone man is. Definitely one of the more heart-touching (if not heartbreaking) stories in A House Full of Strangers.
However, the novella “The Blue Nightgown” is, for me, the strongest story as it has to do with several topics: Sonia’s coming of age, a discarded sexy blue nightgown, her parent’s intimate relationship and a visit from John’s brother Fred and his snooty wife Martha. It definitely shows the depth (or shallowness, in Martha’s case) of each character, and Ms. Devan’s mature, focused writing style really shines.
In her Substack blog, Hearts and Pages, Ms. Stevan recently wrote: “It’s a book about Ukrainian landladies, their families, and those who rented rooms from them. I loved writing it, so love infused the pages, too.” As I read through A House Full of Strangers, I could feel that infusion, as she has written from her childhood experiences growing up with parents who owned a rooming house. Think of her as Sonia, witnessing the different types of people that would come and go through their from door over the years. Some left for a better future, some for marriage, some came to the house to escape a marriage. They are all here in A House Full of Strangers.
You can read more about the author’s rooming house upbringing on her website: https://www.dianastevan.com/a-house-full-of-strangers/
About the Author
Diana Stevan grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and attended the University of Manitoba, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics and a Master of Social Work with Honors. With two daughters grown, Diana lives with her husband, Robert, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. For more, visit her website: https: //www.dianastevan.com
About the Reviewer
James M. Fisher is the Editor-in-Chief of The Seaboard Review of Books. He resides in Miramichi, New Brunswick, with his wife, Diane, their tabby cat, Eddie, and Buster, their Red Merle Border Collie. James also works as an MRI technologist at the Miramichi Hospital.
Book Details
Publisher : Island House Publishing
Publication date : May 9 2026
Language : English
Print length : 325 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1988180274