Review: Sarah Court by Craig Davidson

Originally this was going to be in Broken Pencil. Now I'm not so sure. Anyway, it's a book that deserves to be read, so I'm just posting the review here. Salut.

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Sarah Court
By Craig Davidson
ChiZine Publications
308 pages
$15.95

Reviewed by Andrew MacDonald

Populated by a surprisingly endearing rogues gallery of boxers, drifters, sex addicts, basketball dads, dog fighters, and repo men, Craig Davidson's debut collection, Rust and Bone, was a stiff knee to the groin. Painful to read but, in some bizarre way, utterly mind-bending. When I heard Davidson's new collection, Sarah Court, had just been released from estimable publisher ChiZine, I stocked up on some frozen peas, bought a bottle of cheap rye, and sat down for what I hoped would be a visceral, testicle-swelling experience.

Sarah Court follows five families living on a single squirrel-saturated block a stone's throw from Niagara. You have daredevil Colin, dead set on going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. A few doors down neighbours Saberhagen and Fletch Burger throw their children into a boxing ring and call for blood. Meanwhile shoplifting Patience, her basement famously destroyed by a local pyromaniac, discovers a toilet-bobbing infant in the local department store's loo. And there's a box that might contain a demon, too.

Heady stuff? Yes ma'am. Good writing? You bet your ass.

Present are all of Davidson's pet themes: failing fathers and flailing sons, the relentless clawing to absolution, an utter disregard for the frailties of the human body. Short of Barbara Gowdy, nobody else in Canada writes about the down and out with Davidson's signature blend of tenderness and tough love.

If I could venture a single whisper of criticism, it would be that too often characters blur together. Maybe it's because they all speak a uniquely Davidson dialect: terse half-sentences followed by insanely rich, almost imagistic figurative observations. It's no knock on the stories themselves, each of which stands tall in its own right. As an interwebbed collection, though, they gel a bit too much, if you get my drift.

I refuse to end with criticism of any flavor, though. Sarah Court is just that good. Canada needs more Davidson. Help facilitate more Davidson by buying this book, reading it on the subway, and showing it to people who like to read. Or people who don't like to read. Like Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh, and Charles Bukowski, writers to whom Davidson is often compared, he possesses the unique ability to make readers out of high school drop outs and grease-spattered fry cookers. And while Sarah Court will inevitably deliver a few dodgy uppercuts to your kidneys and gut, the organ it will expertly, lovingly abuse is your my heart.

Reportage

Not much to report these days, re: the writing. Have stories in submission land, am working on an interview with Katrina Best, in the middle of reviewing Matthew Trafford's short story collection "The Divinity Gene," and I'm going to an 80s theme party tomorrow night. Then there's that whole novel thing. That too.

Hope you're swell. Go to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of The Pinch while you're there. Something I wrote is in there.

FCOL2

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD II and DEMONS Launch Party and Readings

The Supermarket
268 Augusta Ave, Kensington Market

Thursday March 24th, 2011 @ 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD II will be on sale for $12. DEMONS will be on sale for $7. Other back-list titles will be available as well.

There is no cover. This is a fully licensed event. Contributors to each publication will be reading to celebrate this unique release. It will be hosted by Ferno House staff.

Eh. I'll probably be reading.

First lines are sexy.

Find the first line of a story I wrote at the sexy first line (and short-short story) website, 50 to 1. The story's actually about a girl who falls for a boy who falls for her best friend, who's a guy, and how they make it work. I don't think it'll ever be published. But you can read the opener!

Here are some other first lines that are cool and so on . . .

Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

and from my mentor, the estimable Larry Garber, from his first novel Tales from the Quarter:

There are some women who are terribly narcissistic; they keep kissing their own shadows and getting their lips dirty.

You should really track this book down and read it. Probably at the biblio, since it's out of print.

Shhh. Quiet.

I don't really enter contests, or haven't in the past. Mostly because I'm miserly and don't like paying for anything. But I'm starting to enter more contests, including the Dzanc Book International Literary Award. You should know right out that I didn't win. But I was named a finalist, which I think is worth celebrating. Deets below . . .

Dzanc Books and Guernica are pleased to announce the winner of the International Literature Award—affiliated with the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal (June 19-July 2, 2011)—who receives airfare, accommodations, and tuition to this summer’s program and publication in Guernica.

Out of just under 200 entries, Final Judge Chris Abani selected a group of poems by Jacob Shores-Arguello as the winner:

Jacob Shores-Arguello grew up in Costa Rica and the United States. He studied poetry and translation at the MFA program at the University of Arkansas where he was the Walton Fellow. He is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Ukraine and the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship in Provincetown.

Finalists include:

Kevin Kaiser’s “Little Parrots” (fiction)
Angie Lee’s “Shuffle Master of the Universe” (nonfiction)
Andrew MacDonald’s “Krupkee” (fiction) - this is me!
Shivani Manghnani’s “Tsunami” (nonfiction)
Ottessa Moshfegh’s “The Chaperone” (fiction)
Brian Sousa’s “Away from the Mountains and Towards the Sea” (fiction)
Eleanor Stanford’s “A Story of Brazil in Three Fruits” (nonfiction)

With 200 submissions, making the final eight is pretty happy-making. Methinks it's time to start shopping the piece!

xo -a

Silk Road / Katrina Best's Bird Eat Bird

The latest ish of Oregon-based literary journal Silk Road is out, and included between its pages is a short story I wrote about a kid who's dad went mental in a supermarket and said kid's relationship with the Ukrainian exchange student he bullies. Doubt this one will ooze over the Canadian border, so if you really, reeeeally need to read, you'll have to either go to the states or order via their website.

Also, I want everyone to go out and buy Katrina Best's debut collection, Bird Eat Bird, which recently won the Commonwealth First Book Award for the Canada / Caribbean Region. Before Katrina hit it big time, I reviewed her book here. But as much as I'd like to take credit for 100% of the book's success, I'm willing to concede that Katrina might have played a role in it, too.

(winky emoticon face)

New Puritan

Dear Puritan Friends,

Out twelfth issue -- Winter 2011 -- is up and running. Head on over to our site (www.puritan-magazine.com) and ogle the new writing!

There you will find:

Fiction by Daniel Scott Tysdal, Christine Fadden, Sharon Erby, and Joel McConvey.

Poetry by Mat Laporte, E Martin Nolan, George Moore, Kristine Ong Muslim, Martin Balgach, Bardia Sinaee, Mark DeCarteret, William Doreski, and Richard Kostelanetz.

An interview with John Lavery by rob mclennan!
An interview with Catherine Owen by Darryl Salach!
An interview with Daniel Scott Tysdal by E Martin Nolan!

And a review of Margaret Christakos`Welling by E Martin Nolan.

We are currently accepting submissions for our 13th issue, Spring 2011 up until March 31st. Head over to our site and use our BRAND NEW submissions manager to send us your work.

We still pay respectable bounties for new fiction, poetry, non-fiction, interviews, and reviews! Hope to see your stuff come tumbling in.

Thanks!

Spencer Gordon
Andrew MacDonald
Tyler Willis

The Puritan : Frontiers of New English
puritan-magazine.com
puritanmagazine@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/thepuritan