Hey! Read more short fiction. Novels are like a nice intimate chat over a pint, but shorts are like a wild, unexpected night out. You want more of those, right? Really, ask any writer: from a writing standpoint, shorts are more fun to write. From a reading standpoint, they’re more potent because they’re all punch and no filler.
I hereby declare, with absolute authority, while knowing I’ll inevitably forget at least one or two collections, that these titles are the official top 10 books of short fiction by Canadians this year. If you can read and not like books like And Also Sharks, The Beggar’s Garden, Once You Break a Knuckle, or Up Up Up, then you have poor taste in modern literature. Sorry. But you do. I can’t even offer you any condolences, as it must, simply, be unfortunate to be so afflicted. And those wild Vancouverites Zsuzsi Gartner and at Matthew J. Trafford, talk about breaking down some walls with short fiction. All 10 of these (11 if you’re counting) made me want to be a better writer.
Alphabetically:
And Also Sharks by Jessica Westhead (Cormorant)
Selected Accolades!
A Globe and Mail Book of the Year
A Kobo’s Best Book of 2011
From the Backcover:
The forlornly funny stories in And Also Sharks celebrate the socially awkward, the insecure, the unfulfilled, and the obsessed. A disgruntled follower of a self-esteem blog posts a rambling critical comment. On the hunt for the perfect coffee table, a pregnant woman and her husband stop to visit his terminally ill ex-wife. The office cat lady reluctantly joins her fellow employees’ crusade to cheer up their dying co-worker. A man grieving his wife’s miscarriages follows his deluded friend on a stealth photo-taking mission at the Auto Show. A shoplifter creates her own narrative with stolen anecdotes and a kidnapped baby. In this collection, society’s misfits and losers are portrayed sympathetically, and sometimes even heroically. As desperately as these characters long to fit in, they also take pride in what sets them apart.
The Beggar’s Garden by Michael Christie (HarperCollins)
Selected Accolades!
Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Award
Longlisted for the Giller Prize
From the Backcover
Brilliantly sure-footed, strikingly original, tender and funny, this collection of nine linked stories follows a diverse group of curiously interrelated characters—from bank manager to crackhead to retired Samaritan to web designer to car thief–as they drift through each others’ lives in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. These engrossing stories, gleefully free of moral judgment, are about people who are searching in the jagged margins of life — for homes, drugs, love, forgiveness. Ranging from the tragically funny opening story “Emergency Contact” to the audacious, crack-fuelled rush of “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” to the deranged and thrilling extreme of “King Me,” The Beggar’s Garden is a powerful and affecting debut, written with an exceptional eye and ear and heart.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner (Hamish Hamilton)
Selected Accolades!
Shortlisted for the Giller Prize.
From the Backcover:
Better Living Through Plastic Explosives is Zsuzsi Gartner’s eagerly anticipated depth charge of deadly satire and trademark dark humour. Whether she takes on evolution and modern manhood, international adoption, real estate, the movie industry, science and faith, art, or terrorism, Gartner fillets the righteous and the ridiculous with dexterity in equal, heartbreaking, and glorious measure. Angels crash land, lovers speak IKEA, a mountain swallows tony West Coast properties, a killer stalks the great motivational speakers of North America. These stories ruthlessly expose our covert fears and fathomless desires and allow us to snort with laughter, while grieving, at the grotesque world we’d live in if we all got what we wanted.
The Big Dream by Rebecca Rosenblum (Biblioasis)
Fancy fact about Rebecca:
Rebecca’s an exclusive writer of the short story, who’s been compared to Alice Munro by critic Steven Beattie. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for all three of the country’s major short story gold detectors: the Journey Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the Danuta Gleed Award.
From the Back Cover:
At Dream Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher, people are struggling to do more than their jobs. They struggle to fall in love. They struggle to stay that way. They struggle to be good parents, and to be good children. They struggle to have friends, to eat lunch, to be happy, and to answer the phone. And all that struggle can be pretty interesting . . . especially on company time. In The Big Dream, acclaimed short story writer Rebecca Rosenblum documents a new generation coming of age in the workplace. With its transparent, biting, understated prose, The Big Dream is an In Our Time for the twenty-first century.
The Divinity Gene by Matthew J. Trafford (Douglas & McIntyre)
Trafford’s short fiction has appeared in journals like The Malahat Review and in anthologies as amazing as D&M’s Darwin’s Bastards. He’s also won the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction, and been shortlisted for the CBC Literary award … twice. I reviewed this glowingly for Quill & Quire, and said something like, “In these unique and wildly imaginative stories, Trafford pairs crisp diction with unpredictable plots: you think you’re going to arrive on the third floor, but the elevator takes you elsewhere.” I hereby predict this book will win Trafford the Danuta Gleed Award. He will at least be shortlisted.
From the Backcover:
A beguiling and bizarre collection of stories from a remarkable new voice in Canadian fiction. A mob of teens descends upon Paris in the thrall of a self-help author; the hottest club in town is staffed by angels. This is the uncanny world of The Divinity Gene. It bristles with humour, pathos and imaginative power [and] maps the frailty of the human heart. Its characters—bereaved, sidelined, cast adrift—journey forth to the undiscovered places, in search of something to believe in, someone to love, always with disarming results. Masterfully original, deeply human, The Divinity Gene introduces a bold and evocative new writer.
The Meagre Tarmac by Clark Blaise (Biblioasis)
Selected Accolades
Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Award
Longlisted for the Giller Prize
From the backcover:
The Meagre Tarmac explores the places where tradition, innovation, culture, and power meet with explosive force. It begins with Vivek Waldekar, who refused to attend his father’s funeral because he was “trying to please an American girl who thought starting a fire in his father’s body too gross a sacrilege to contemplate.” It ends with Pranab Dasgupta, the Rockefeller of India, who can only describe himself as “‘a very lonely, very rich, very guilty immigrant.’” And in between is a cluster of remarkable characters, incensed by the conflict between personal desire and responsibility, who exhaust themselves in pursuit of the miraculous. Fearless and ferociously intelligent, these stories are vintage Blaise, whose outsider’s view of the changing heart of America has always been ruthless and moving and tender.
The Meaning of Children by Beverly Akerman (Exile)
Selected Accolades
A Finalist for the Readers’ Choice for this Year’s Giller
Won the David Adams Richards Prize
From the backcover:
These fourteen stories approach the world”s complexities through a child”s eyes, grapple with the sorrows and ecstasies of child-bearing years, and probe the truths that touch us with a child-like clarity at the end of life”s journey. A thirty- something venture fund manager frets over his daughter”s paternity; an orphan whose hands kill whatever they touch is accused of homophobia; a mother of two can only bear to consider abortion in the second person; the wife of a retirement-aged professor finds him unconscious near his computer. The Meaning of Children speaks to all of us who – although aware the world can be a very dark place-can”t help but long for redemption through children
Moonlight Sketches by Gerard Collins (Killick Press)
Gerard Collins has been winning awards in Newfoundland for maybe a decade now. It’s about time he gave us a first collection …
From the backcover:
These stories are set in Darwin, Newfoundland, a small town with big secrets. On the surface, nothing ever changes and everyone is content. But the truth is as restless, cold, and mutable as the ocean in these sixteen linked short stories. In Darwin, people’s secrets are hidden and their fears are buried. But night after night, the moon bears quiet witness to their brightest moments and darkest days. A Catholic girl finds herself pregnant and feels hopelessly trapped. An elderly couple fears the end of their happy, quiet life when their money sock goes missing. Two lesbians walk into the wrong bar on a Saturday night. A wild youth seeks to rectify his life, but first takes his bookish friend on one last heist. With his trademark dark humour and a nod to the unknown, the author shines a light on the difficulty of being human and yet somehow surviving with grace, dignity, and a modicum of happiness.
Once You Break a Knuckle by DW Wilson (Hamish Hamilton)
This one’s the most newly released of the lot, and its stories have appeared in all the right places, including this year’s Journey Prize Anthology, Vol.23. It is absolutely great.
From the backcover:
Once You Break a Knuckle tells stories of good people doing bad things: two bullied adolescents sabotage a rope swing, resulting in another boy’s death; a heartbroken young man refuses to warn his best friend about an approaching car; sons challenge fathers and break taboos. Crackling with tension and propelled by jagged, cutting dialogue, the stories interconnect and reveal to us how our best intentions are doomed to fail or injure, how our loves can fall short or mislead us, how even friendship–especially friendship–can be something dangerously temporary. Wilson’s world is always dangerous, barbed with violence and the possibility of betrayal. And yet, in this small, finely-wrought universe, a dogged, wry dignity is usually enough to see us through. Once You Break a Knuckle is about the courage it takes just to make it through the day.
The Reverse Cowgirl by David Whitton (Freehand)
David Whitton’s debut is one of the most talked about short fiction releases of the year — Lynn Coady picked it on The Afterword as one of the 2011 books she’s most looking forward to, and Sean Cranbury plugged it on The Advent Book Blog — and yet his bio the most scant I’ve seen. “David lives in Toronto.” How alluring. Who is this young man with the racy book title?
From the backcover:
Keen, intense, and darkly comic, the short stories of David Whitton are full of misfits, oddballs, dropouts, klutzes, and loners. You might dress em up, but it’s just a matter of moments till they unravel back into their fallen, and fascinating, selves. Their mistakes and misdeeds, temptations and transgressions thread their way through these stories, stirring up surprises on every corner. Whitton navigates current life and future worlds, dirty truths and murky fantasies, continually setting up, if only to send up, modern romantic scenarios. In the end, whether the lovers meet online or on acid, at a wedding or in battle, the object of ardour might be in for a rough ride. Maybe they’ll stay afloat—tremulous and tentative—or plunge to earth in delightful and refreshing ways.
Up Up Up by Julie Booker (Anansi)
Full Publisher’s note:
Up Up Up heralds the arrival of a writer of astonishing range, compassion, and acuity. In this stunning short story collection, Julie Booker grabs the reins from writers like Lydia Millet and Miranda July and takes off at full speed, and in directions all her own.
A pair of plus-sized friends make tracks for a kayaking trip in Alaska. A woman vacations with her parents at a Texas trailer park, wondering why she can’t meet a man. A worldly member of a tour group selects sacrifices from among the most cherished belongings of her fellow travellers. A young man dreams of rescuing an abusive friend’s girlfriend — and of having her for himself … Through these deceptively simple storylines, Booker reminds us of the power of words to enlighten and move us — but most of all, to delight us. Her writing is a revelation — wildly whimsical and yet razorsharp, highly unusual and yet prompting gasps of recognition on every page. Reader, prepare to meet your new favourite writer.
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Twice a month, Salty Ink Takes a Look at What’s Going on up in Canada, Profiling Some of Our Notable Canadian Counterparts and/or Books I’ve Deemed Worth Cheating on Salty Ink’s focus for …
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thanks for recognizing The Meaning Of Children, Chad. a rare pleasure to be among such good company.
happy christmas/holidays/new year to all. may 2012 be the year we all realize our dreams…