Last Chance to Renew
by Scott Randall
Signature Editions, 2006
A Minor Planet for You and Other Stories
by Leslie Greentree
The University of Alberta Press, 2006
Reviewed by Ted Harms
There’s not much fear of cultural
appropriation here – Randall Scott’s first collection of short
stories (we do mean short - most don’t get far past ten pages) are
nearly all concerned with males, with most seeming to be coming up to,
in the midst, or just coming out some sort of crisis. Leslie Greentree’s
first collection of short stories (not as short as Randall’s; she
seems to be more comfortable in the 15-20 pages range) nearly all deal
with women, not all in as precarious position as Randall’s creations
but there’s still a sense of gravitas with her characters and situations.
Randall's "The Accident on Strathearn"
is a story of an accident told from the viewpoints of those involved – a
van-driving student starting university and the car-driving recently
married husband with his son from his previous marriage and his new
wife. Randall gives us short descriptions in alternating sections of the
drivers - how they got there, what happened before, and what happened
after. "Back Before, When My Brother Had Two Kidneys" gives us
brief snippets of the lives of two brothers.
The highpoint of the collection is
"Kincardine Breakwater" – the story of a marriage, its
end, and the husband going back to a memorable location from his
marriage. Randall does a great job of being evocative but not overloading
the story. While not eschewing adjectives, he paints a good picture.
Describing the couples rented cabin:
With its lacquered logs and crossed
corners, the exterior of cabin three was promising, but once inside,
the couple was somewhat disappointed. The drywall on all four sides
of the room had been covered in a dining room wallpaper, a pastel
blue print of patterned crests and leaves that had faded. The only
heating available in the cabin on a cool night would have to come
from the aged space heater that sat unplugged by the bed. Neither
Stanton nor Zoe wished to express their disappointment, so they
ignored the uneven boards on the floor and the dim light that came
through the one side window. He managed to say it was cozy, and she
said they’d probably be spending most of their time out of doors.
And with that, they decided on their first walk along the
waterfront.
Randall’s stories are all relatively
neat and tidy episodes; good and solid but not all terribly memorable,
which I blame on the homogeneity of the main characters. Most of his
characters seem to be coming from the more-or-less the same die - late
twenties/early thirties, just out of or just heading into university,
newly married, maybe some young children, and some sort of crisis is
looming or just happened. That Randall is a recently hired professor, you
get a sense that he’s drawing on or extracting from personal
experience. He does a good job of the stories, but more variety in
characters or giving his characters more than a dozen pages to do their
thing might have helped mix things up.
Greentree’s collection is very
strong, though her favouring of female protagonists is just as noticeable
as Randall’s favouring of males. But, in contrast to Randall,
Greentree’s characters are varied enough for the reader to believe
that though she may be drawing on nuggets of personal experience, that
there are healthy doses of fiction added to the mix.
The story that gives its title to
the collection is about a frustrated woman, whose husband is spending
more time doing things that he hopes impresses his wife than spending
time with her – the icing on the cake is his attempt to scour the
heavens, trying to find an unnamed heavenly body for her. In "Hot
Chocolate with Guy Lafleur," a woman's childhood memories (good and
bad) are relived while she watches the outdoor NHL games that was held
in Edmonton some years back. "How You Know" describes how a
woman responds to a stalker’s email – with a healthy mixture of
fear, suspicion, and, eventually, defiance. "Ramona’s
Escape" deals with a girl who’s dealing with her vaguely creepy
mother and trying to avoid what may be an inevitable legacy.
My criticism of Randall’s
cookie-cutter males is relatively minor given the strength of his
writing. Greentree has two previous collections of poetry (one of which
was short-listed for the ’04 Griffin Prize) and she consistently
demonstrates a poet’s way with words in her stories.
These are both
good collections and both hopefully signs of good things to come from
these writers.
Ted Harms lives in Kitchener. |
