Atlantic Books

Atlantic Books

Locate me
FR

# 85 Winter 2017

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As this delightful story begins, we learn that “There once was a city by the sea with a peculiar problem.” Puffins have suddenly and inexplicably invaded this seaside town, turning up in museums and galleries, on rooftops and doorsteps, at major intersections and anyplace the eye can see. They seem to be especially fond of the downtown, where they prove to be a major distraction, tying up traffic and generally becoming a nuisance to all but the birdwatchers.

Would perhaps shipping them off to Iceland be a possibility? Fortunately “someone small and smart” proposes a more practical solution. Soon, boats filled with fish (donated by local seafood shops) head out to sea with a myriad of puffins happily following them to the ocean. Problem solved…for now!

Utterly charming and winsome, this book is a delight, from the beautifully decorated endpapers to each page in between. A backnote explains how young puffins do, in fact, ofen get confused by city lights and wind up stranded on land as they try to make their way to the ocean. Young readers may be inspired to learn about the Puffin Patrol that seeks to rescue and reroute lost puffins.

The simple, spare prose lends the book an understated quality that enriches the subtle humour and playfulness of the story. The illustrations are loose and layered and colourful with a folk-art flavour that perfectly suits the text and captures the distinctly Newfoundland setting. Using thin lines, solid colours and a predominantly flat perspective, Doodey conveys warmth and whimsy in every image and the cheery, cheeky puffins add an impish tone to the story. Children will relish the opportunity to pore over the images in search of puffins while adult readers will appreciate the cleverness of both the text and illustrations.

The Puffin Problem
Lori Doodey
Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides

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When I saw the cover of Green Plate Special: Sustainable and Delicious Recipes I felt a frisson of panic. I thought it was a school textbook; at least, it was giving a darn good impression of one. Textbooks have always had that effect on me, unless it’s about mathematics, in which case a mere pamphlet can make me faint.

Apart from the dominant brown-green colour, the photo of mostly raw and not particularly appetizing food, and the conservative typeface, there were the bullets of information below the subtitle. Bullets like: Minimize Food Waste, Create a Greener Kitchen and Extreme Green Tips. (Each one looked like it should have ended with an exclamation point.) I opened the book prepared for 200 pages of earnest and preachy.

Relief was what I felt once I got into the book. Yes, there’s a little that’s hard to swallow–none of the food, by the way–like author Christine Burns Rudalevige’s suggestion we buy loose tea instead of tea bags, for the sake of the planet. (Good luck with getting the world’s tea lovers to quit tea bags.)

Most of the book’s green pronouncements are in essays, taken from the author’s column “Green Plate Special” for the Maine Sunday Telegram. They mildly punctuate the book and in fact make for mostly interesting reading. I found the information about “best by” dates and how they lead to unnecessary food waste to be fascinating, as well as why ground, pastured meat is the cheaper, greener option. Burns Rudalevige’s explanation in “Modern Meat Vocabulary” of the difference between “certified humane” and “certified organic,” “grass-fed” and “pasture raised” is extremely useful.

“Blue plate special” is a term used in some restaurants for the daily special, usually going at a reasonable price. Burns Rudalevige has coined “green plate special” to describe the dishes in her book. Instead of being cheap and cheerful, they’re “green in the sense that the food on the plate is better for the environment and your body.” All well and good if the 100 or so recipes are easy to prepare and taste, as the book’s subtitle promises, “delicious.”

Taste is subjective but I didn’t see a single recipe in Green Plate Special that wouldn’t appeal to most people–well, maybe the kimchi ramen might give some folks pause. Otherwise, what’s not to like about spicy crab and arugula omelet, lobster and corn wontons, mustard pork schnitzel and maple pecan cream tart?

Burns Rudalevige has been a journalist for decades and was, for several years, a cooking instructor. In other words, she knows how to write a recipe that’s instructive and gets the job done. Each recipe gets the amount of explanation required and no more. Some, such as kimchi ramen, are brief. Others, like Spanish potato tortilla, are three times as long. A good result is what counts and, in both cases, Green Plate Special delivers.

More shrift should have been given to the images. They’re important, because so many of us look to the pictures for inspiration. While photos such as a full-page snap of lemon and herb spatchcock chicken and another of husk cherry and hot pepper upside-down cornbread look mouthwatering, others are downright disappointing. There’s no way, for example, I’d ever want to make kale rabe and potato tart based on the book’s image of the finished product. It looks like a bad Twitter pic from a too-dark restaurant.

There’s enough special in Green Plate Special to recommend it, however. It’s a cookbook for its time and contains information needed in every kitchen and by every cook today.

 

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For a writer to elicit tears and exuberant laughter in the same book is an accomplishment. Such is the triumph of Manjusha Pawagi’s memoir, Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy.

For those who have not had to endure the anguish, nausea, depression, fatigue of cancer treatment, Pawagi’s memoir informs us. When she goes to the hospital for a minor procedure, doctors discover she has leukemia and must be treated immediately. “Usually you’re never tested,” she says. “You skate on the surface of an ordinary life, not realizing how lucky you are that the ice is holding you up.”

The reader is right with her as she describes agonizing pain. A nurse or doctor saying, “You may feel a little pressure” is a statement to dread. The fevers, diarrhea, vomiting and nightmares that chemo induces are so relentless, Pawagi starts hallucinating and must force herself to open her eyes to realize she is not wandering in a post-apocalyptic war zone. We are privy to the indignities and discomfort of an ileostomy bag, of having her diaper changed, of being finally able to go to the bathroom in her wheelchair only to find the door won’t close. Walking on her own after months of being bedridden is just the beginning of a slow stumble up an enormous incline.

But interspersed among these horrors is Pawagi’s humour. She says that rather than “First do no harm,” the Hippocratic oath should more accurately be, “You can’t say we didn’t warn you.”

Describing an episode in her youth when she is unable to respond after fainting, her mother is asked if her daughter speaks English. “‘She went to Stanford,’ my mother informed him, which to an Indian parent is a more pertinent piece of information for a medic than a blood type.”

Finding the bread in the hospital uneatable, she says, “I think it was toasted outside the city somewhere and then trucked in.”

When she chooses the memoir “Wave” to reread in the hospital, a memoir about a woman who lost her parents, husband and two sons in the Sri Lankan tsunami, her husband wants to know if there were no memoirs about the holocaust or the Rwandan genocide at the library that day.

The playfulness, generosity and devotion of her husband is another moving component of the book. Reading about him, readers agree when Pawagi writes, “Love is a rock, not stone that crumbles into dust. It’s the Canadian Shield itself, granite as old as the Earth, solid and unwavering beneath my weak and unsteady feet.” Family and friends are instrumental in her cure, mobilizing to help her survive.

Her husband and mother are with her every day. She has a friend who has connections with the CBC and a radio documentary is made about her. Senator Asha Seth pleads with the Ottawa Senate to establish stem cell registration that reflects diversity among minorities. Fortunate to recover enough to have a stem cell transplant, Pawagi tells the story of finding a match. Meeting her donor after recovering is one of the moving experiences described in this memoir.

Pawagi has had a remarkable career, from CBC journalist to children’s author to lawyer and then judge, but after only one week in the hospital she writes, “I’d already forgotten…that I’d ever been anything other than a sick person. …I never used to want to be anyone other than myself, and now I constantly look at people and wish I were them.”

Yet as soon as she begins to feel better, in between hospital stays, her generosity prevails. Learning that one of her doctors is single she tries to set him up with her colleague. She suggests restaurants where they can meet. “Because,” she writes, “of course, a hematologist and a judge cannot be trusted to make a dinner reservation in downtown Toronto, where they both live, without careful supervision.”

She has poignant perceptions about her children in this memoir. She also has insights about writing. “It seems counterintuitive that writing about being sick could serve as a distraction from being sick, but it’s true.”

Manisha Pawagi deftly explores the harrowing recovery of cancer through chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, though of necessity it is a narrow subject, one with few surprises. Every reader will celebrate her recovery. I believe they, like me, will want to read another book by this intelligent, funny, generous writer, one yet unwritten and of a subject unknown, one that gives her the freedom to surprise us all.

Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy
Manjusha Pawagi
Second Story Press

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Camelia, the loveable but easily distracted heroine of Follow the Goose Butt, Camelia Airheart, has a thing for bling. So when her older brother, McCurdy, announces that he knows where Aunt Tillie got her fancy leg bracelet, Camelia can’t wait to go there to get one for herself.

McCurdy reminds her of her faulty GPS (Goose Positioning System) and she promises to follow the goose butt as they make their way to the Tantramar Wetlands. After a somewhat rocky landing (which involves crashing into a singing and dancing duck namd Drake), Camelia follows Drake’s advice for how to get her very own anklet. She then goes through a rather harrowing ordeal but is overjoyed when she ends up sporting a super shiny anklet.

Meanwhile, McCurdy suffers his own heartbreak at the Wetlands. As the siblings wing their way home, McCurdy reminds his sister of Aunt Tillie’s motto: “What happens in Tantramar, stays in Tantramar.”

This followup reunites readers with this feisty protagonist, who is somewhat challenged when it comes to directions. We are also introduced to a new and delightful character in Drake, the duck to keeps running “afowl” of Camelia’s shaky landing attempts. This rollicking rapper begs to be read aloud as he shimmies and shakes his way though an ode to crack corn.

Odette Barr’s animated and energetic illustrations magnificently capture Drake’s rapping and beautifully complement this lively portion of the text. In general the soft, pastel-coloured illustrations are perfectly suited to the story, vividly depicting the facial expressions of each character, the wetlands and the terrain over which Camelia and McCurdy fly and the bursts of action when Camelia crashes into Drake (repeatedly) and when she goes through her ordeal in the enclosure.

Once again, these authors have created a lighthearted New Brunswick adventure that will entertain young readers and listeners.

Take Off to Tantramar
Odette Barr, Colleen Landry & Beth Weatherbee, Illustrated by Odette Barr
Chocolate River Publishing

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Owen Sharpe is surprised to come home and find his grandfather, Neville, surrounded by boxes, particularly when he learns that they contain the life’s work of his good friend Gunnar, who died a few years previously. Gunnar’s wife has asked Neville to sort through Gunnar’s papers and determine which ones should be sent to the archive in northern Iceland. Gunnar had been a translator of Icelandic poems and stories.

Neville mistakenly sends one of Owen’s notebooks instead. The notebook contains a terrible secret, one that Owen is desperate to keep from his grandfather.

Owen manages to convince Neville that the two of them ought to hop on a plane and head to Iceland to deliver the proper notebook to the archives and get Owen’s back. They get to Iceland and have some very memorable experiences, but Owen can’t ignore the fact that Neville’s behaviour has become increasingly erratic.

There are several things that make this latest offering from Jessica Scott Kerrin stand out. The unique and beautifully depicted setting is one of those things. Although Owen and his grandfather are only in Iceland for a couple of days, the country, its history, culture and people, are vividly brought to life. As a budding photographer, Owen tries to capture the magnificent landscape through his camera lense and in that way, the author cleverly brings readers into the unique vistas they encounter.

The relationship between Owen and his grandfather is also genuine and touching, as is the way that the Red Deer Readers Book Club ladies look out for Neville. Kerrin also handles Neville’s frequent bouts of confusion and Owen’s mounting concern for his grandfather with sensitivity and compassion.

There is an understated quality to the prose that serves to heighten its poignancy. A quietly powerful gem, this novel will find a special place in readers’ hearts.

The Things Owen Wrote
Jessica Scott Kerrin
Groundwood Books

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As award nominees, Anne and her friends Penelope and Hiro are looking forward to a fancy dinner and front-row seats at the annual Quest Academy Awards. However, the evening takes a decidely unexpected turn when a strange boy steals her gauntlet, a group of Copper Knights storm the stage and before Anne can figure out what’s going on, she inadvertently triggers a new quest. A Dragon Slayer quest.

This is problematic for multiple reasons: Anne has no desire to kill the dragon queen (the goal of this quest); dragon slaying is highly illegal; and killing the dragon queen will quite likely result in war between the dragons and humans.

This quirky and delightful trio, determined as they are to not kill the dragon queen, seek to warn her and once again find themselves on a seemingly impossible quest. As they attempt to find an ancient and powerful sword, they are nearly arrested for causing an avalanche, helped by a woman who is slowly turning to stone, betrayed more than once by friends, sentenced to death by the dragon queen (but opt to take the dragon trials instead) and ultimately do battle with a giant metal dragon that is intent on destroying the entire Hierarchy. While Anne is in the midst of these and other fantastic escapades, she also finds a few new clues to the mystery of her past.

This sequel barrels along at breakneck pace, offering unique and surprising plot twists at each and every turn. White has created a complex and enchanting world that is delightfully witty.

The tips from The Adventurer’s Guide that preface each chapter are riotously funny and the author skillfully weaves humour and playfulness throughout the narrative, deftly balancing the tension and unrelenting action. The story is filled with clever and imaginative elements, sophisticated social and political structures and endearing and sympathetic characters who are fallible yet full of heart.

There is something for every type of reader in this book, which is an absolute gem from beginning to its unexpectedly moving end, when Jeffery tells a subdued and inrospective Anne, “For what it’s worth, sometimes it’s okay to not get over something. Sometimes you just have to figure out a way to live with it.”

Profound statements of truth from a sparrow.

The Adventurer’s Guide to Dragons (and Why They Keep Biting Me)
Wade Albert White
Little Brown and Company

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Getting to be part of the cast of a fairly long-running cable TV show with a loyal following is a pretty sweet deal for 15-year-old Aiden. While he knows that Pop Quiz, a high school teen drama, isn’t exactly a world-famous production, he is proud to be part of the current cast. Even though it means he spends his whole summer filming the next season, it’s an enviable part-time job.

Aiden also enjoys the camaraderie with his fellow cast members and is pumped when he finds out his character is slated to take on a more prominent role in the next season. He is also psyched that the romance storyline between he and Anais’s character is going to be more fully developed.

However, his excitement is shortlived, since they soon discover that the show is being dropped. Ratings are down and it seems that young people don’t watch TV any more. As Aiden and his friends process this news, they begin to formulate a plan to give Pop Quiz one last blaze of glory.

This latest entry in Orca Books’ Limelight series highlights the behind-the-scenes workings of a typical TV series. In this book, Aiden points out all the work that goes into bringing even a modest TV series to the screen, how many people it takes to film each scene, each with their own particular part to play. He also recognizes that even Pop Quiz’s biggest stars rarely go on to become world-renowned actors and actresses.

Whatever the future might hold, he still believes the show and its stars, past and present, deserve a proper finale. He and his friends come up with a creative and realistic proposal.

Aiden is a likeable protagonist who learns some valuable life lessons while also displaying tenacity and heart. The secondary characters are also winsome and readers will root for them to succeed.

Pop Quiz
Tom Ryan
Orca Book Publishers

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From Uncle Brooklyn, who is fussing and fretting over Pearl the Cat, to the midnight dreamers who “Pluck the stars like peaches ripe, and keep them for a while,” this book is filled with lively verses celebrating the stories of everyday folks. Each poem dances joyfully off the tongue (begging to be read aloud).

There is a beautiful blend of whimsy and poignance. “The Petty Harbour Cow” and “The Worried Chicken” will have young readers giggling, and “Marc Chagull” and “Itchy’s Moonsong” are similarly sweet and satisfying. Numerous selections–“Nan and Poppies,” “The House Next Door” and “Here Comes the Sun”–are more tender, heartfelt and stirring. It is a perfect blend, making this book pure fun with room for pensive contemplation.

The energy and exuberance that Kansala exudes in these tales is well matched in the rich and vivid illustrations. Bright, bold colour and a subtle infusion of collage elements combine to bring the Newfoundland setting to life in each image, just as the poems capture a distinct sense of place. Words and images work together to create a rollicking and richly cadenced collection that is playful, jubilant, nostalgic and heartwarming.

While some of the poems have an almost tongue-twisting quality, their rhythm never falters. It is truly a book for all ages to savour and enjoy.

All Around the Circle
Cara Kansala and Max Dorey
Breakwater Books

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“This will be an adventure, Henrietta. I’ll be back for you tomorrow, and you can tell me about all the new things you’ve done.” So says Henrietta’s mother encouragingly as she prepares to leave Henrietta (and her beloved doll, Gwendolyn) for their first overnight visit at her grandparents’ cottage.

Henrietta tries to think about all the things she loves about the cottage, the great blue heron Grampa has said she might see there and the brave explorers who venture off into the great unknown. She has a wonderful day with Gramma Lucie and Grampa Henry, canoeing on the pond, savouring an evening walk on the trail and listening to Grampa play his guitar until she is too sleepy to stay awake.

Then she and Gwendolyn lie alone in the dark, listening to all the frightening noises. Thankfully, Gramma has just the answer. Soon Henrietta is waking up to sunlight, the smell of breakfast cooking and a wonderful morning surprise down in the meadow.

This gentle tale of a young girl’s first overnight adventure away from home sensitively addresses a child’s very real fears. Henrietta is encouraged to make up her mind to be courageous, just like world-famous explorers do when they face new situations. But ultimately her grandmother understands and respects her fear and provides the perfect solution in the form of a very special nightlight.

Henrietta’s Nightlight also beautifully depicts all the wonders of Henrietta’s day at the cottage: her canoe trip with Gramma Lucie, where they encounter a wonderful assortment of birds, and all the exquisite flowers and plants she and Grampa Henry discover on their twilight ramble. The story and its soft coloured-pencil illustrations work beautifully together to capture a strong sense of warmth and familial love as everyone strives to help Henrietta achieve this milestone. It is a sweetly satisfying story of warm, summer nights and loving families and one little girl facing her fear.

Henrietta’s Nightlight
Alice Whitney
Chocolate River Publishing

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What version of the news would you like–Fox, CBC, Al Jazeera–or something in between? The world media can provide you with whichever “truth” suits your taste. What about different versions of your own life? Would you like some choice there, too?

But wouldn’t that require that someone, or several someones, in your family lie on your behalf? And lie big, on a Trumpian scale. Then, how would you push through this mendacity? And its attendant feelings of betrayal, disorientation and fear? All to decide on your own best version of the truth?

If you were Halifax journalist Pauline Dakin, you might write a book called Ride Hide Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood.

You thought you had a difficult or complex childhood? How about a fugitive childhood spent on the run? Reading Run, Hide, Repeat I found myself actively running alongside Dakin and her younger brother, Ted as their childhood careened from strange to incomprehensible. Here are two children whose divorced mother tells them they are running from the Mafia and receiving protection from a covert anti-organized-crime task force.

Uprooted from Vancouver, where they began life as a family of four and where their estranged father and ex-husband remains, the trio then move to Winnipeg and, years later, to New Brunswick. The moves are done slyly, with no word to family or friends, new and old, which deals brutal blows to the maturing children’s hearts and psyches, rupturing ties with close and extended family members.

Every time the astute young Dakin thinks the cloak-and-dagger stories simply cannot be true, literal stacks of supporting evidence and a few actual events strongly declare otherwise. Her truth-loving mother, Ruth, along with loyal family friend and father stand-in, minister Stan Sears, assure her that danger is ever-present. Again and again the children are warned that one false step by any of them will result in kidnappings, physical harm or death.

Incredibly, Dakin and her brother make new friends, complete high school, keep their senses of humour and develop into caring–if emotionally taut and worried–young adults.

Along the way they are pretty much forced to accept, with varying degrees of grace, the disruptive and mysterious circumstances of their lives. They also realize, with some despair, that their questions merely bring on more circular and nonsensical answers.

Or no answers at all. Nothing. Until February, 1988.

It is then that her mother and Reverend Sears give Dakin, now working as a journalist at the Telegraph Journal in St John, New Brunswick, a story: “…our story–the story I was warned never to tell.”

The heart of Dakin’s tale is the “why” of her strange, often terrifying young life. Well into the narrative Dakin is old enough, fed up and resilient enough to bring the determined gaze of the trained journalist to the deeper questions leftover from a life of byzantine deception. The lies being impressed upon her and her brother as children, the lies they still believed in their twenties, seem bizarre at first, then silly. Is there to be no challenging of reality by the Dakin siblings? Ever?

And yet, think of the crafted realities, or “fake news,” that adults everywhere swallow each day. In the US, many Americans still believe that President Obama was not born in the United States and that President Trump had the largest inaugural crowds in history. In 2017, Canadians were told–and some believed–that a “man-eating shark” had been caught in Lac-St-Jean, Quebec.

Obvious to many, thankfully, is that for skepticism and diligence when assessing “the truth” are crucial.

Dakin firmly pulls the reader back to reality when she drills deeper into the murky, complex inner worlds of betrayal and forgiveness. These she examines not from the journalist’s eye, or from the still-wounded child’s eye, but also from an adult’s spiritual perspective. In the process, she gains clarity and gratitude.

Ultimately, Ride, Hide, Repeat is about the durability of familial love, especially her relationship with her brother, her only fellow foot soldier in surviving a childhood of perpetual and inexplicable threat. For Dakin’s two daughters and her brother’s family there is evident, bountiful love.

Even with her father, the complicated alcoholic Warren Dakin, “…a soldier…businessman…father, with four children from two families,” Dakin is able to mend some fences. They exchange words of love down a telephone line as his life draws to a close.

Of her mother, Dakin writes, “I think of her as a boxer in the ring, stunned by blows but pulling herself back to her feet again and again, only to face another punch, another loss, another betrayal. I am staggered by the strength and the weakness.” From her mother, and others, Dakin experienced “an unshakable sense of being loved.”

In this strange time of negotiable truths, this “post-truth era” as American cultural writer Ralph Keyes put it, Dakin’s book examines some of the territory around truth, one part of which is intention. In her family, there was no intention to hurt or incredibly, even to deceive. There was only the hope for and the achievement of protection and care. And there was love, enough for survival and ultimately forgiveness.

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They came for us in the night.

We didn’t know at first, but they were there.

The three of us dreaming in bed with the sounds of the traffic and the all-night convenience store right there on the corner, and the dive bars down the way, and the drunks.

They came for us first in our dreams—barely noticeable—a shadow within a shadow in the corner of a dreamed room; the trunk of a car.

Later, we thought we could hear them. First, behind the walls of our apartment; just outside the window, hanging from the eve trough or in the branches of the trees out front—then finally, we thought we could see them: news footage, music videos, porn sites—they were right there, flitting around the edges, in disguise.

At last, we could feel them in our bones and in the beating of our blood.

 

And I still don’t know where it all started.

But it had something to do with the Painting Game.

The Painting Game, Shane’s dad, the Radio Room, and the war.

They’re tied together somehow—and then everything came to an end.

And that had to do with me.

***

I came a long way to find what my life meant, you know?

From the bars and the back alleys of The Metropolis to the tenements of T Dot to the cliffs and the hills of the 7-0-9—sometimes I thought I’d never make it.

But I found what I was supposed to do.

It was like the seed of a flower inside me.

And the seed of that flower was a flame stretching up into the heavens that would never die.

That’s what I am.

And this is how it happened.

***

One day the satellite plunged into Lake Sludge.

Shane, Nina, and Brit watching the shaky video footage on the news.

A black cylinder, glinting darkly in the light, dropping out of blue sky.

An enormous splash. Debris flying up. Shock waves in the water.

It replayed over and over again, the angle of the satellite in mid-fall suggesting some terrible consequence.

 

They’re in the car now, but will never be safe.

The three of them knowing they just have to keep moving.

And Carter, poor little Carter, with his PTSD.

 

The man at the toll beside the ferry terminal watching as they pass.

It actually made them feel good to see a person behind the glass.

The black smoke from the ferry’s chimney hangs in the air above them.

 

They blow by a hitcher on the gravel shoulder of the highway.

Just another refugee.

Her cardboard sign saying HOME.

 

***

Nina’s like, it’s 1991. But it’s not your 1991, it’s ours.

And it’s not even 1991, it’s 2024.

It’s like, sci-fi or whatever.

We’re ahead of you fucking dumb shits, but also, we ain’t.

We’re like, an alternate universe or whatever.

We’re like, hardcore over here—we ain’t your world.

But we are your world.

I don’t even know what it is we is, but we are, so like, deal, I guess.

This here is your world.

Don’t care what you say:

This is your world.

***

They call him Shaky, Milk, Dead Fox, Skeet Love.

He’ll rap only in front of the mirror at home, a straight-up genius, thinks Nina, legit.

Skeet Love, Shane says, that’s like, Rock, yo. Like where my dad is. That’s a fucking Rock term and that’s me, so fuck you.

Know what that shit means?

Naw, man, of course you don’t, you’re dumb as shit. But I’m not.

I’m not, and here’s why:

It means I’m like dirt, yo.

Like, shit.

Like, shit on my whole life, man.

And there ain’t nothing that makes you smarter than being shit.

 

Skeet.

Like, what’s Nina say about it?

Like, a derogatory term for urban, white, working-class.

Someone who’s up to no good.

A total outsider, like every damn day of my life.

That’s me.

(Except, not.)

 

So whatever, and anyway, like I said, Fuck you.

***

Nina and Brit checking his flow.

His hands, the cut of his shoulders.

At first, Brit was only around occasionally, now she’s here all hours.

When she met them, Brit was on top of the moon.

Like, over the world.

Seriously giddy.

That’s sometimes the way she talks when she’s excited—she mixes shit up.

Shit is always getting mixed up—totally—like your world and this world.

It’s messy, man—like where does one start and the other one end?

Or do they even?

 

Nina and Brit and hours and hours on karmaloop, lookbook.

Ecko, Obey, HUF, Billionaire Boys Club.

White Doves, Yellow Airplanes.

Nina’s got the best clothes, Shane the best drugs.

The two girls changing outfits while Shane paces and smokes, flexing his trophied lats in the bedside wall mirror—this world, and that man, like legit.

Shane’s like, Know how many crunches I can do, motherfucker? Well neither do I cause I lose count after a thousand. Chin ups? Whatever. This body is tight, yo, like tight as shit, like a virgin—for real.

He’s old school, thinks Brit, sells pills for five bucks a pop when everyone else is into powder.

They go to a club, the dance floor crazy, Brit and Nina making out for the crowd while Shane leans at the bar sipping a cooler.

He hates beer, has a gluten intolerance.

Nina once said, Shit, you’re so skinny, baby, it’s hot. I wish I was sick. I wish I had cancer.

She pictures herself, like him, with her ribs showing through. She could kill anything with ribs like that. She could destroy the universe if she were that thin, her knee bones knocking together painfully in bed.

She sees herself emaciated, grinning.

She winks and the skyline is flattened.

Waves her hand and all the buildings utterly devastated.

Blackened bodies, ash on the wind.

Drop another twenty pounds and you’re the shit, she thinks, she smiles.

In the club, she screams over the music:

Ever wanna just, like, destroy the fucking world?

Brit smiles back at her. The vamp fangs she bought online glow in the black-light.

When Shane first saw them, he was like, Keep that mouth away from my dick.

But not really. Really, he was totally down.

 

Brit’s fangs—they’re good for a week and then fall off—two white little talons, like bullets.

 

Brit’s a poet—the fucking legislator of the wound is what she told Shane and Nina when they first met.

 

Nina and Brit coming off the dance floor covered in sweat.

Shane thinking how everyone in the club, every eye in every head, is watching them.

They rent bikes from a Thai kid outside and peel through the streets, neon blinding them.

Left, right, left, left and right.

If there’s anyone following them, they ain’t anymore.

Not yet, Nina thinks, wanting to vomit. They come to a park and throw the bikes to the ground.

Sprawled on the grass. Trying to see stars through the smog above their heads.

You guys are my family, Brit says, her eyes huge in the dark. I feel like I’m home.

Nina punches her shoulder, retches and pukes.

Sour Puss and grenadine, a puddle of blood.

Brit says, Take the in out, and you’ve got a grenade.

Nobody laughs.

Nina’s spinning.

On the train home, Nina with her head on Shane’s lap, KO’d.

Shane watching the other passengers.

Dude in a suit with his eyes all over Nina’s body.

Another looks at them over the top of his newspaper.

The soundtrack in Shane’s head screams bad cop drama.

They get off two stops early, Shane carrying Nina, and Brit trailing behind.

Later, Brit watches the two others sleep on the mattress. She meant what she said. The sun is up, Monday morning traffic on the street. A fan by the bed blows strands of Nina’s hair into the air.

She pops another of Shane’s pills. Red Butterfly. When they wake up that afternoon, they find her on the fire escape cross-legged. Her eyes as shiny as a polished gun barrel.

***

Soon, Leo will get out of prison, and when he does, he’ll come looking for Nina.

She belonged to him, but now she belongs to Shane.

She puts her nose behind Shane’s ear and says, You own me, baby, you own me.

She snuggles closer to him in bed.

He rolls over to face her, his fingers in her hair, and she’s thinking how lovely it is to have his fingers in her hair.

The thing he does when his fingers are in her hair is that first he smooths it all down—almost like he’s petting a dog or a cat, and then his hand comes down over the curve of the back of her head, and with her hair in his hand, he sort of clenches his hand very gently and tenderly into a fist, and then releases her hair and smooths the back of her neck.

Then he’ll tuck some loose strand of hair behind her ear, and he’ll kinda cup the spot where her jaw and neck connect—kinda right where her earlobe is.

Then he’ll caress her earlobe between his thumb and forefinger, and run his hand down her neck until his warm palm meets her collarbone—and then he’ll do the same thing again, and again.

You wouldn’t think someone like him could be that way—so sweet—but he is.

And when he’s like this with her, she worries he isn’t brutal enough for the world or something, but maybe he is brutal enough—and anyway, maybe it’s not something she needs to worry about.

 

A phone call will come and it’ll go like this:

Skeet Love?

Yo.

This is Dr Dre. You a fuckin’ genius.

No shit? Dope.

Here’s a million dollars.

Sweet.

ODB came back from the dead for this shit. I played him yo demo.

 

But first Shane will make a demo.

But before that, Shane will win a million rap battles.

And there’s Nina stage left, watching him embarrass the fuck out of each and every comer.

Like step in the ring, motherfucker.

Like Mohammed Ali.

Shane will make it, and Nina will wear a white faux-fur bolero jacket, a black mini with thigh-high black boots, and her eyes will burn from the camera flashes.

But really, Nina knows, a phone call will come like this:

Shane?

Yo.

This is Leo. Imma fuckin’ shoot you dead.

Skeet Love
Craig Francis Power
Breakwater Books

by

Prince Edward Island has produced its share of literature, inspiring place-based novels, poetry, children’s books, and what seems to be a never-ending supply of historical writing. One genre that is rarely associated with the province, however, is horror. While the local oral tradition is rich with stories about forerunners, personal appearances by the devil and other supernatural occurrences, this has not translated into the written word. Prince Edward Islanders may know their neighbour’s business, Dave Stewart notes in the introduction to Fear From A Small Place, but what truly frightens them remains largely unexplored.

The 20 short stories contained in this anthology are guided by two thematic underpinnings. All authors have, in the words of Stewart, “been shaped in some part by Prince Edward Island,” whether through birth, residence or in one case marriage. Authors were also given great leeway in defining “horror” on their own terms. The creative flexibility afforded the authors is matched by a diversity of experiences. Contributors range in age from teenage to senior, with the majority somewhere in between; some are publishing for the first time while others have numerous books under their belts.

As with any collection of this sort, some stories resonate more than others. And what works for this reviewer may not with another reader. Disclaimers aside, one standout contribution is Kelly Caseley’s “Mistress.” A short story in the truest sense of the word–it contains just 25 words–it highlights the squeamish feeling of appearing in public in the same outfit as one’s peer. Far-removed from the tropes of masked killers and sundry monsters, it nonetheless speaks to a deep-rooted fear that many have.

Another standout is Russell Stewart’s “The Flag.” A piece of nonfiction told from the perspective of the author 26 years earlier, it describes his family’s early morning drive to an undisclosed location in Charlottetown. While Stewart and his sister struggle with sleep in the backseat of the family car, it is revealed in the postscript that his parents had joined other Islanders in attending the hanging of two men charged with murder. While this, the last public execution in Prince Edward Island’s history, has been written about elsewhere (most notably Michael Hennessey’s award-winning fictional account, The Betrayer, published by The Acorn Press in 2003), the juxtaposition of innocent youth unknowingly attending this gruesome event as the assembled adults treat it as a public outing speaks volumes.

Also worth highlighting is Dale Nicholson’s “No Regrets.” An eight-panel comic that addresses loneliness among senior citizens, it strikes a chord due to the reality of its premise. Like many other contributions to Fear From A Small Place, it reveals that for many of us, our deepest fears concern personal relationships and how they may play out over an extended period of time.

One of the strengths of this anthology is the diversity of formats it represents. While most contributions appear as traditional short stories, Nicholson’s comic is joined by poet John MacKenzie’s “Blood and Frost in a Stand of Birch (a redneck neurological noir in narrative verse)” and David Moses’ “Birth Father,” which is presented in the form of a television script.

I enjoyed this book and encourage fans of the horror genre–local or otherwise–to give it a read. My endorsement, however, is not without quibble. The book is quite attractive, as one might expect from a publication put together by a graphic design firm. That said, I did find myself distracted by the appearance of the occasional typos. While not the end of the world, these minor blemishes could have been rooted out with more vigilant proofreading, thereby affording the stories the final form they deserve.

Fear From A Small Place
Edited by Dave Stewart with Laura Chapin
Graphcom Publishing