Evidence
by Ian Colford
The Porcupine’s Quill, 2008

In the Quiet After Slaughter
by Don McLellan
libros liberated, 2008

Reviewed by Matthew Firth

I was slightly familiar with all of these writers before reading their recent short story collections. I have published a single story each by Ian Colford and Don McLellan in past issues of Front&Centre, the litmag that I edit/publish. Mark Paterson sent me a story a few years back but I rejected it. That story – "Worker’s Compensation" – comprises one of the fifteen in his new book A Finely Tuned Apathy Machine.

Despite the fact that Paterson holds the mild distinction of being the lone Front&Centre rejectee of this threesome, it is by no means a knock against him, as Paterson is a solid writer of variable and humorous fiction. The allure of Paterson’s short fiction is that no two stories read alike. The collection opens with a story 63 words long, which, given the length, is more the telling of a joke than a short story. But it still works fine, especially for an opener. And the book ends with an impressive speculative tale that weighs in at 21 pages. In between standout stories include the hilarious "The IGA Kissing Bandit" about a dimwitted sting to nab a grocery store bag-boy Casanova and "Lost Dog" a somewhat tender story of waning friendship and sincere humanity. The best story is "Dysfunction Junction" wherein Paterson blends 1980s pop culture, poverty and child neglect in a captivating narrative that ends with a jolt. But there are low points. The aforementioned "Worker’s Compensation" is saccharine and the premise of an injured worker trying to cheat the system is cliché. "Cream Corn Finale" also flops. In it Paterson is unable to successfully merge the two narrative streams: an amateur filmmaker trying to film an absurdly horrific scene, while, at the same time tend to his whining girlfriend, named, of all things, Jordache. Vomit is supposed to be the bonding agent for the story but it’s not enough to hold this muddled piece together.

The bumps aside, Paterson’s second collection from Exile Editions is entertaining, at times weird and wacky, funny, and well-written.

Moving from Paterson to Ian Colford was a pronounced swing into completely different territory. Where Paterson gives readers humour – Colford’s fiction is visceral, cerebral and at times cold, like a stab with a blunt shank directly to the reader’s guts.

First; to explain the set-up of Evidence. Colford has taken a different approach. None of the stories in the book have titles. There is no Table of Contents. It does not say "Stories" on the book jacket or title page; only at the end in the Acknowledgements, which are less cryptic than the remainder of the collection. The title – Evidence – is all the reader needs to know, for even the back jacket blurbs are not terribly revealing. But while the book’s adornments are understated, Colford’s fiction is anything but – these stories explode in vivid detail, amazing breadth of characterization and geography, and stunning displays of conflict and emotional upheaval. Colford has a remarkable ability to depict dissonant characters out of step with their surroundings: a college professor who witnesses an assault and is helpless to do anything about it; a perpetrator of violence who, during counselling, grimly meets a woman drawn to his violence, the very thing he is supposed to be purging from his being; an American student lured back to his northern Albanian homeland to seek evidence of the death of his parents at the hands of ethnic cleansing; a naïve hotel worker duped in a horribly inhumane way by an unassuming older woman, plus a wild array of other characters, both major and minor. Even the secondary characters, such as the two children of a less-than-honest but despairing Romanian woman, strike with force. In this story, Colford reveals poverty and hopelessness via a pair of children, without resorting to cliché or dull sentiment – and by doing so evokes chilling realism. Often there is a creeping, subdued malice at work in these stories mingled with an artful but slightly deadpan delivery that reminds me of Michel Houellebecq.

Many of Colford’s first sentences grab the reader immediately:

These are opening sentences laced with promise and possibility, delivered simply and succinctly. Any reader would be drawn to read on, to wonder why the need for counselling? Or how is it the narrator was "placed" with a family? And what is the allure of the boy in the wheelchair?

Colford also closes his stories beautifully. Consider this ending:

I looked around. From this spot, where I had almost died, I saw nothing that I could recall ever having seen before. None of the people walking by looked familiar. Even the air I was breathing seemed strange. Elizabeth, with her long dark hair trailing down her back, her sweet oval face that reminded me of the peasant girls back home – even she was a stranger. I didn’t know anything about her.

We turned and walked back to the car.

A man almost dies in this story but none of the details add up to much for him. His near dying remains strange, out of sorts. This is just how it must be and he is fine with carrying on – walking back to the car – surrounded by mystery. This hits at the crux of Colford’s brilliant stories; they open with promise, wander and muse on human emotion and experience, but then end without comfortable resolution. It sounds like real lives lived to me, depicted here in stellar form by a superb Canadian short story writer.

Now, this leaves Don McLellan in a tough spot. He must come on stage after Colford and Colford has absolutely knocked the audience on its ass. But McLellan still has a job to do. Fortunately for him, he’s a tough nut and does not back down from the challenge.

More understated than Colford, less humorous than Paterson; McLellan’s collection is best summarized as surprisingly changeable, while at the same time centred on a specific location: the Renfrew Heights neighbourhood of Vancouver, originally established, McLellan explains, as a housing project for soldiers returning from World War II. Some of the stories are set directly in the neighbourhood others concern characters from Renfrew Heights who have pushed off into different pockets of the globe. And still other stories examine how the neighbourhood has changed since it was first established, by, for example, becoming home to new Canadians from Asia struggling to find their footing. It all makes for an informative blend of history and fiction, rolled together by McLellan’s efficient story telling.

"Horse" brings together two residents of Renfrew Heights who are down on their luck. Former childhood chums, they re-unite as impromptu business partners when a heavy dump of snow falls on Vancouver. The story examines sharp socio-economic boundaries that divide the haves from the have-nots.

"Fugitive" centres on the misadventures of a mentally-challenged Renfrew Heights youth nicknamed Fender back in the days when "retarded" was the descriptor for such kids. I remember a kid from my own childhood who was similarly afflicted – the labels used for him were often much crueller but at the same time, Joseph (the Anglicized version of his Polish name) was accepted as part of the crowd of boys who ran the streets in my neighbourhood. McLellan’s story, likewise, shows a boy out of step but at the same time very much part of the fabric of Renfrew Heights, so much so that his disappearance for a few days takes on near-mythical status. McLellan relates it all well, without resorting to nostalgia.

"Scram" is an excellent story as well, focussing on a late teen who sets out by thumb from Renfrew Heights to see North America. Again – as a hitchhiking veteran of several thousand kilometres across Canada myself 20 odd years ago – this story really struck home. This passage from "Scram" beautifully summarizes the allure of meeting strangers:

People loved talking about themselves. Particularly those who say they aren’t comfortable talking about themselves. Especially to strangers they know they’ll never have to face again. I heard the life stories of miners, actors, salesmen, nurses, policemen, communists and members of the Ku Klux Klan. I had people cry on me, curse me, threaten me and wet their pants in my presence. They were the unemployed and the unsatisfied, the unbalanced and the unbearable, the understanding and the unheralded.

Here, in this one paragraph, McLellan shows readers the remarkable variety of humanity open to those courageous enough to go out and seek it.

In the Quiet After Slaughter is full of unforeseen and amusing moments served up well in McLellan’s strong narratives.