In Praise of Short II

A while back I wrote a post about the joys of reading short non-fiction, and recommended some titles that I felt fit the bill when it comes to smart, funny, and engaging esssay writing. I also mentioned that the reason I had been reading short essays was because I was so overwhelmed with moving into our new house, and just couldn't focus on any form of novel. Well....lately as I've mentioned before I've just been swamped with work, so naturally my reading habits tend to change during these stressful times. Thank god for short stories! Of course one doesn't read short stories just when one's brain is on overload, because really, short stories do require a great deal of attention if they are written well. Consider the thoughts of Canadian writer  and editor Lisa Moore, in her introduction to The Penguin Book of Contemporary Canadian Women's Short Stories:

The short story seduces and provokes infidelity. You will be untrue to the four walls of your room, the weather outside, the city or field, supper bubbling on the stove. You will give up everything – the armchair, your lover, your children – and step through, briefly but absolutely gone.

For the past few months there have been many occasions when I have been briefly and absolutely gone. And what a joy it was! So I thought it time that I share some of the precious gems I have been devouring of late:

Adverbs by Daniel Handler
I was very excited about this book when it first came across my radar. I loved the title and the clever cover illustration created by cartoonist Daniel Clowes of Ghost World fame. And though I rarely take those author quotes on the back of the book very seriously, I must confess that Dave Eggers' take on Handler's book piqued my curiosity. According to Eggers, "Anyone who lives to read gorgeous writing will want to lick this book and sleep with it between their legs." Well, geez – with a recommendation like that, how the hell can I say no? I was also very curious about the author Daniel Handler, because all I knew about him was that he was the creator of the very successful Lemony Snicket series for kids. It's a rare breed of writer who can write well for both children and adults. So does Handler pull it off? Well....sort of.

The cover of this book states that Adverbs is a novel, but it's really a collection of very loosely connected short stories, all focused on the subject of love. The inside flap description gives us a clue as to how connected (or not) these stories are:

At the start of the novel, Andrea is in love with David – or maybe it's Joe – who instead falls in love with Peter in a taxi. At the end of the novel, it's Joe who's in the taxi, falling in love with Andrea, although it might not be Andrea, or in any case it might not be the same Andrea, as Andrea is a very common name.

Hmmm...perhaps I'm just an old grump, but I found this ambiguity about the identity of the characters in these stories to be a tad annoying after a while. But I really did love the concept of each story titled as an adverb – Immediately, or Obviously or Briefly, to name a few. Handler is indeed a master of words, and these quirky, dysfunctional love stories are cleverly constructed, peppered with Handler's unique sense of humour. I enjoyed sentences like this, very much:

The move was kickass, which was appropriate, because tonight it was called Kickass: The Movie.

Handler even displays flashes of brilliance and beauty in his writing – the descriptions of unrequited lost love in Briefly, in which a teenage boy has a very brief encounter with someone named Keith, and falls deeply in love with this stranger, for the rest of his life:

It is only on mornings like this, the birds just out living life, that out of view, privately, briefly, you can lose your head. All alone, unwitnessed, there is no one else to believe it, the way paths cross in the sun. Love is this sudden crash in your path, quick and to the point, and nearly always it leaves someone slain on the green...Is it possible to love someone forever but not think of him for years? Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Is it possible to lose someone who only stepped in front of you once in a towel? Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Grant me this, this brief murdered moment, and then I will bury it sadly and go on with my game.

Overall it's an entertaining read, and I do recommend the book (but don't buy it – get it from the library, ok?). The trouble with Handler in Adverbs is that he's just too damn in love with his talent and his love of wordplay. Half way through, the writing gets bogged down with this "look at how clever I am" approach, and the stories really begin to suffer, as did I, trying to finish this damn fool thing. At the end I was more relieved than enlightened to have this adverb monkey off my back.

An interesting bit of trivia about this book, which I learned from the blog Pages Turned. Apparently Handler has admitted to blatantly stealing the idea of Adverbs from a novel written by Lorrie Moore, entitled, Anagrams. I've heard nothing but great things about Anagrams ever since the book came out, so it's just a matter of time before I Clearly, Obviously, Naturally put it on my to-be-read pile.

Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance
by Matthew Kneale
Once again, I was smitten with the title and the cover. Heavens, I'm so shallow! But honestly, how could one resist? A simple faux-age cover, no images, only very basic serif type. But wait – the second letter 'l' of 'Small' is missing; cut out with an exacto knife. At first one almost doesn't notice this discrepancy – the cover seems so insignificant, really, until one looks closely and begins to think about the ramifications of that missing letter. Keep that in mind as you explore these subtle but powerful stories.

Kneale presents his readers with 12 compelling stories of ordinary people caught in often extraordinary circumstances, in differing parts of the world – China, The Middle East, South America, England and Africa. These telling vignettes of people's lives reveal sad, dark truths of human nature – things inside all of us that we would rather ignore or deny. In the story Stone, an English family travelling in China suspect that a Chinese man has stolen from them, and their well-meaning interference goes horribly wrong. In Powder, a London solicitor who is bitterly disappointed with his life and floundering career gets involved in selling cocaine, simply on account of happenstance. Metal tells the story of a British arms supplier, who after surviving a violent demonstration in Africa, decides to change the path of his life forever...perhaps.

Each story is delicate and haunting, engaging and rich with satire. I highly recommend this collection, and now can't wait to dig into Kneale's highly acclaimed novel, English Passengers.

That's it for now, but stay tuned – I'll be writing about many more amazing short story collections in the near future, as well as some of the wonderful novels I've been enjoying lately. Work has really been eating up my blogging time, but I'm going to try very hard to get back to talking about one of the great romances of my life – my never-ending love affair with books.