PRISM-matic (Now in technicolor!)

Fresh from the seedy underbelly of Canadian literature comes "Krupkee, on a Molecular Level," a short story of mine published in the recently-released new issue of PRISM International. Gazooks!

I've already mentioned this, but the story is about a Ukrainian punk band on the run from the law. It also features alcholic toilet water.

Much as I'd like to explain what that means, you should probably just head to your local magazine, book, and journal distributor and pick up a copy of the magazine to read for yourself. As a bonus, you'll be supporting two industries that badly needs you support: literary journals in Canada (yay!) and me ( *crickets* ).

xo!

- Andrew

MTLS

Another bout of blog left untended. Shame on me. Shame shame. Especially when I have a review of Mike Spry's Distillery Songs and Matt Trafford's The Divinity Gene online in the latest edition of MTLS.

Interested in what I have to say? That's sweet of you to say. You can sate your review-lust here!

Review: The Reinvention of the Human Hand by Paul Vermeersch

Poetry Review
Andrew MacDonald

The Reinvention of the Human Hand
by Paul Vermeersch
Tonronto, ON: McClleland & Stewart, 2010
88 pp. $ 18.99

Toronto-based poet and former Lampert Award nominee Paul Vermeersch returns with The Reinvention of the Human Hand, a book of 38 pitch-perfect poems that test the boundaries between man and beast. The collection follows The Fad Kid, Burn, and Between the Walls, showcasing Vermeersch’s trademark wit and an artisan’s talent for crafting thought-provoking poems from the most unexpected of materials.

In “The Painted Beasts of Lascaux,” the “Yellow ochre horses” painted on cave walls may predate starships and the centaurs of our imagination, but they sing the primordial song “that’s been snarled in your heart – breaking it, / trying to pound its way free – for your entire life.” Meanwhile, an ostensibly benign encounter with the natural world in “A Scorpion in Alcohol” introduces “a venom so subtle, it lingers / and threatens to ruin you still,” the realization that the realm of the bestial might just be closer than we think.

Time and again, Vermeersch asks us to re-examine where we place ourselves in relation to the natural world. Not surprisingly, a number of poems hinge on our relationship to primates. In “Twenty-one Days with a Baboon Heart,” for example, an ape – the most striking of “our primordial reflections” – gives up its heart to fix an ailing human infant. More Orwell than medical miracle, the transplant brings with it the spectral presence of an animalistic “fear what we cannot know.” Though the poem appears to end rhetorically – “how long / do you suppose she survived with their terror?” – Vermeersch cleverly embeds the answer in the poem’s title. A longer piece, “Ape,” suggests that the aforementioned terror might be of our own making. Broken into three sections, the poem addresses mankind’s exploitation of its nearest link, concluding with actual dialogue between Michael, an ape capable of speaking sign language, and researchers eager to learn the fate of Michael’s mother. From Michael’s harrowing account, you almost wish they hadn’t asked.

Like much of the collection, “Ape” confronts its reader with some heady, deeply troubling philosophical questions about what it means to be human. Which is not to suggest that Vermeersch can’t make us laugh; comedy has its place in the collection, but only at the service of provoking more self-analysis. “Last of the Blondes,” a clever riff on recessive genetics, asks Ingrid, the world’s sole natural blonde, if her birth will be “co-opted / by governments and syndicates?” Will she become “their Golden Child, their Chosen One, their Brand?” We laugh at the absurdity of Ingrid’s celebrity status. Laugh, that is, until our flaxen-haired Everywoman’s dissolution into legend leaves us wondering what—existentially, biologically, and culturally—a world without blondes would mean. Another poem, “Three Anthropomorphic Studies,” features a familiar trio of Warner Bros. cartoon characters consumed by an almost existential despair. Here again, the gap between man and beast dissolves.

At times Vermeersch seems to laud the natural world, envying the way it has “mastered the arts of giving and taking,” (a doozy of a line from “Ode to Amoebus Proteus”), while poems like “In the Glorious Absence of Gods” and “Boys Who Envy Werewolves” point to the disastrous consequences in store for those who ignore their primeval selves.

If the collection has a weakness, it’s that the poems may cohere a bit too much, offering slightly different takes on a thesis that Vermeersch has no trouble proving in a single go. But that is a minor quibble. Both a swan song to our shared primordial past and an examination of how the animal within thrives in spite of, or perhaps in retaliation to, our best efforts to subdue it, The Reinvention of the Human Hand might very well be the year’s most astute meditation on human nature and its lingering past.

(Originally published in MTLS)

Review: I'm a Registered Nurse Not a Whore by Anne Perdue

Fiction Review
Andrew MacDonald

I'm a Registered Nurse Not a Whore
by Anne Perdue
London, ON: Insomniac Press, 2010
258 pp. $19.95

I’m a Registered Nurse Not a Whore, Anne Perdue’s provocatively titled debut, is a collection of eight funny-sad short stories about the lengths we go to find love in a world of pawned dreams and everyday catastrophe. Perdue’s characters are jerks, spazzes and obnoxious boozehounds. They cuss, kvetch and refuse to play nice. But they are also expectably human and just as susceptible to the wiles of hope and love as the rest of us.

In the “Escapist,” for example, expert tourists Doug and Shar wreak havoc in the Caribbean. Here, as elsewhere in the collection, the narrator is a roving shifty-eyed third person, binding itself to the story’s dynamic duo while doling ample helpings of snark and discontent. Not only do we dislike Doug and Shar, we have all met them in some incarnation or another. They are the goons who butt in front of us at the supermarket, the lushes who come to parties empty-handed and drink all the good stuff. While Doug heaves himself dramatically on an ice sculpture in an effort to drunkenly protest paying for a bottle of expensive wine, the perspective shifts to his wife Shar. Watching on, she weighs the pros and cons of getting yet another divorce before deciding to stand by her red-faced, steak-craving man. Somehow Perdue convinces us to suspend judgment of her creations, if only for a second. There is nothing left to do but gape at these marvelously complementary specimens in wonder.

Then, there are the protagonists of “Dry Well,” Keith and Heather, hapless first time home-owners desperately trying to stay financially and emotionally afloat. Between the mice, the busted furnace, and Keith’s career-woes, there is not much the pair can do but scratch their heads and hold each other tight. In one memorable scene, they frolic in an inflatable backyard pool until an errant nail deflates their fun. And then the rain comes. Even here, in a ramshackle house that refuses to be fixed, the human spirit endures. The ending, a brilliant recounting of the flawless trajectory of a gummy bear, is well worth the wait and proves that, even at its bleakest, the universe can still serve up grace.

Sally Snow, the main character in CA-NA-DA, is perhaps Purdue’s most striking creation – a whirling dervish of quirk and emotional spasticity. Middle-aged and awash in her own life mistakes, she urges her slacker of a son, Lyle, to get a life. She even offers him a cool grand to take the MENSA membership test with her. But Lyle is content working at the local shooting range, chumming up with illiterate rednecks, and Sally’s attempts to buy him over only widen the gulf between them. The story really comes alive when Sally welcomes Ruth, a Haitian billeting in Canada with her baby, Joe, into her house. It is not giving too much away to say that Ruth becomes vinegar to Sally’s baking soda, her presence being just what the proverbial doctor ordered to bring the story to a climax.

On a technical level, Perdue has commendable writing chops. It takes a special kind of artist to cuss like nobody’s business and still sound smart. Junot Diaz manages it, Mordecai Richler, too. Add Perdue to that list. When she is not crafting sensual metaphors and provocative imagery, Perdue drops F-bombs with aplomb. Moreover, each story is meticulously crafted and well structured. Any one of these tales could light up the big screen with their evocativeness.

If I'm a Registered Nurse Not a Whore has a flaw, it is Perdue’s occasional lack of sympathy for her characters. They are not the most likable people in the world, and I cannot help but wonder whether a bit more narratorial compassion might go a long way in endearing them to us. But that is a minor irritant in an otherwise splendid work. Manic but never gratuitous, I’m a Registered Nurse Not a Whore is a brave, sly and touching meditation on sharing an imperfect world. Perdue’s characters learn, like the rest of us inevitably do, that no matter how far we fall, as long as there is company we can at least enjoy the ride.

(Originally published in MTLS)

Two items of note. First and fore, my review of a pair of novels, Combat Camera and the Evolution of Inanimate Objects, can be found in the current ish of Event. Deets here.

Also, PRISM International has picked up my story, "Krupkee, on a Molecular Level," for a future issue. It's about a Ukrainian punk band on the run from the authorities after the lead singer puts the son of a political high-up into a coma. Other features include mysterious toilet alcohol, a plane crashing into the steeple of a church, and several reference to genitals. At its heart, though, it's about fatherhood and redemption. Seriously.

Will keep you updated, you interwebs you.

Katrina Barton Best: Bird by Bird interview

My interview with Commonwealth First Book - Canada and the Caribbean Region - Award winner, Katrina Barton Best, is up and atom in the latest issue of The Puritan. Read! Wonder! Enjoy!

Link to the pdf can be found here.

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.

* * *

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.