"Touch" by Alexi Zentner

In Alexi Zentner’s atmospheric “Touch,” grandfather Jeannot returns to the village deep in the Canadian North woods when young Stephen nears his eleventh birthday, and begins to tell stories. Jeannot founded the village when the dog he was walking overland with got too tired to go on, and settled down to sleep. The stories he tells Stephen flow from two traditions, the tall tale and the fairy tale. They do not spare the frank and deadly detail, nor the outrageous misbehavior, nor the vengeance served cold.

Stephen’s birth comes at a time when he’s too young for World War I and too old for World War II. Thus can his grandfather have founded a boom town in the harsh and unforgiving Canadian taiga. But can the other things his grandfather tells him be true? He says he has encountered a number of evil spirits in the forest and survived them. He survived a winter in a sawmill with his pregnant wife when the snow started in mid-fall and only let up in July. What he did to survive the winter there, and the ghastly retribution flowing from it forms the crux of the story.

Mr. Zentner in his debut shows strong promise in handling the geography of the primeval forest and of the larger-than-life characters that populate this story. The fairy tale aspect is never far from the surface narrative, and pops up at unexpected times. The stories are told by the characters, whose presence we barely notice. It could be Grandpa Jeannot telling the story to Stephen, or Stephen telling the stories in turn to his daughters. All these features of the story tell of Mr. Zentner’s skill and ambition in his first novel. Both are considerable.

An atmospheric story with extreme conditions of snow, river, forest, and fire, and extreme conditions of human survival, which bring out the best and worst in the human beings and the non-human beings, “Touch” presses deeply into our memories and consciousnesses. The style is perfect for the subject matter, and suspending our disbelief rewards us generously here. Take it up if you’re ready for a good, well-told fantasy.

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"Bridge in the Rain" by Bianca Lakoseljac

I made this choice from my good friends at NetGalley, not realizing it was a series of short pieces. However, the collection contains well over its share of striking and memorable characters in the throes of epochal moments. Such is the stuff of fine short fiction.

Ms. Lakoseljac presents in the title piece a man who in the present day lets his jealousy of the relationship between his wife and Vincent van Gogh lead to cruel negligence and disastrous – life and death – consequences. “The Perfect Woman” follows the marriage-ruining self-absorption of a woman who learns through fantasy and brinksmanship that she may not measure up to the perfections of an inflatable doll. Is the doll real? The efficacy of this question leaves us in no doubt of the author’s haunting strength. “Years of Silence” chronicles the sad and, again, self-absorbed, saga of two friends who have been out of touch for years. The stirring and captivating use of the long letter from long ago ranks as one of the finest effects in this collection. In “Heads or Tails” Ms. Lakoseljac reduces the stay-married-or-not issue to the flip of a coin. Very nearly.

Just as certain themes and personality traits dominate the majority of these pieces, I think it no mistake that the author leads off and finishes with uplifting, hopeful stories, and even presents a foreword that establishes the recurring talisman: a park bench in Toronto. We read through a confusing, unsettling fairy tale after the foreword, and it reinforces the writer’s mission, although for me, it isn’t needed. It seems a true, if charming, piece of self-absorption for the author herself. However, “Night Walk” portrays a true-feeling change of heart in a young woman who opts to stay with a position she loves in a children’s library, rather than take the grand opportunity in an adults-only office in another city.

It’s been some years since I devoted any energy to short fiction. These pieces, though, have refreshed me in this area; they are consistently excellent. We witness the doubting, troubled internal dialogues of people at crossroads or crises. Seldom do characters behave in any sympathetic way, and if we’re lucky, we might get a hint of some trouble that led the character to do what he or she does. For those who enjoy short stories, these belong in the very first rank. Trust me.

I was a little befuddled as to how to rate these pieces. On the whole there is somewhat of a sameness to the characters, but individually, the stories shine. They're clear, direct pieces, and very enjoyable.

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"Larry's Party" by Carol Shields

In "Larry's Party," Carol Shields gives us the intimate portrait of Larry Weller, Canadian landscape architect who goes through life as through a maze. In fact, mazes are such a perfect metaphor for this poor sap's perception of life, that our cagey author makes him a lover and professional designer of them.

We have chapters with particular aspects of Larry: "Larry's Love," "Larry's Work," "Larry's Folks," even "Larry's Penis," a chapter on his sexual experiences. As the book progresses, each chapter gives a kind of recap of past events - and while giving a somewhat curious idea to the reader (could these have been published before, as shorter pieces?), the real intent is to adopt a kind of parochial stance toward each of Larry's various facets. This is certainly the approach Larry seems to take. He's not particularly sophisticated or well-read; his emotions often hit him with surprise and he meets them with distrust. Ms. Shields drops hapless Larry into a coma that lasts three weeks; during this time he is cared for by strangers, and his son (from whose mother Larry is divorced) comes and speaks to him fervently, and reads the daily paper to him every day, cover-to-cover. This is the perfect comparison to make with our dim-ish hero: he lurches from one thing to the next in life, not knowing how people care for him.

The eponymous party is the last event of the book. Those attending take up a trendy conversation about what it means to be a man at the end of the millenium. Our author makes it clear: it means going through life relatively cluelessly, acting honorably toward men and women, understanding that as relations with women go, that we're in an experimental age, where roles are all in a state of flux. For which we should all be thankful.

Ms. Shields is very compassionate toward her characters and her readers. Her ear is one of her stronger suits - she knows how people speak and how they express how they feel. This is a sweet piece of work, and its ambition is to capture the essence of a rare species, the white North American male. She succeeds in taking her readers on an interesting emotional journey - that's something she always succeeds at.

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