No Call Too Small
by Oscar Martens
ISBN: 9781771681957

Oscar Martens’ No Call Too Small is a collection of short stories about moments: a flash, if you will, into pivotal moments of a life. In the title story the reader witnesses the moment a police officer must choose between loyalty to another officer who has committed a serious crime and honouring the badge he wears. This officer is no bad cop, but he is human, and this moment where “[n]obody’s a criminal yet. Nobody’s a liar. Maybe if we stand still we can maintain this pure state, three cops holding ridged against the future,” (7) is the final moment before his career changes, at best, or, he changes, at worst. It’s a tense first tale in the book and it sets the stage for what is to come.

From here we go on to meet Farah, whose boyfriend once made her laugh, but now “makes her face sag. Close to him she feels extreme gravity, a black hole that breaks her down” (15); Little Dana, forced to help her father with his ill-judged business plan, sitting on a Ferris wheel, “[h]er smile . . . on maximum voltage, her teeth hurting from the pressure, her cheeks beginning to ache”(52) in an attempt to convince others she is having fun; Carl, the janitor mistaken for the new high school principal, who fires himself for not showing up to work; and others standing at their crossroads.

Martens’ storytelling gets into the crux of these critical moments. He shows the reader what desperation and loneliness feels like without ever telling us his characters are alone or desperate. He sneaks the reader up to the windows of their lives, a little voyeurism in the prose, where we witness the ugly side of family, the desperation of men, and the difficult decisions of a life, once on a slow, planned out course, now drifting closer to a cliff. The stories breathe, leaving the reader room to contemplate their own feelings or parallels to the characters and situations.  These expertly crafted stories are the perfect read for either a cold night sitting by the fire where one can devour them all at once, or, read over a longer period of time, enjoying one, then reflecting on it before beginning the next.

Crystal Mackenzie is a writer and editor from Calgary, Alberta. She is the Editor in Chief of FreeFall Magazine.

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by

Left
by Theanna Bischoff
NeWest Press (2018)
ISBN 978-1-988732-43-5

I am a sucker for a good mystery. Theanna Bischoff’s LEFT is a good mystery. Set in Calgary, AB between 1981 and 2013, it is a tale spanning generations told in what feels like multiple short stories. 29-year-old Natasha has gone missing leaving behind her pregnant, 18-year-old sister, Abby, who was living with her. Foul play is the most likely suspect and I couldn’t put the book down until I had answers. The novel’s mysteries reveal themselves through a series of chapters, switching between the points of view of important players in Natasha’s life and disappearance. The chapters either reveal moments that shaped Natasha’s life leading up to the day she went missing or dips into the secrets of those around her. Do any of these revelations reveal the mystery behind her disappearance? 

Like any good mystery, there are twists and turns, possible who done its, and family tensions that can either get worse or dissolve under the pressure. Abby has been estranged from her parents since her pregnancy, her feelings summed up in the line “[my mom] ambushed me with a hug yesterday, her skeleton arms trapping me, while I just stood there, waiting for it to be over” (55). Losing Natasha, her rock in the world seems to affect Abby the most. Each chapter dedicated to Abby’s voice is a one-sided conversation she is having with her sister. Natasha’s loss binds people who may otherwise have to grow apart, as they create a partially chosen and partially forced-together-by-circumstance family to help Abby raise her child, something they all know Natasha would have done. 

Left is not just a good mystery, though. It is the slow torture of grief and longing while waiting for the conclusion of a body. The novel follows the characters from those first few hours of panic and fear when Natasha doesn’t come home to the years of maybe’s and what if’s that follow. I felt memories of my own fears bubble up: the first time I lost sight and sound of my daughter; the first time she walked home alone from the school bus and I watched the clock at work, minute by minute until she called to say she was home; the first time she wasn’t home and I couldn’t get a hold of her. But my daughter always came home and I got to sigh relief that the worst had not happened. Bischoff’s novel is not about the sigh. It is a collective waiting of Natasha’s family and friends, the detective, and the reader, all holding their breath, hoping the phone will ring.

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Crystal Mackenzie

On Huron’s Shore
by Marilyn Gear Pilling
Demeter Press (2014)
ISBN 978-1-927335-34-5

We all have to grow up, some of us are just better at it than others. I’ve often wondered about the importance our society places on individualism, the lack of rights-of-passages we have for our children, and what that means for their ability to move successfully from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood. Can we ever truly be individuals or is the influences of our elders too strong? For just as any rebellion is shaped by its opposition, any break or push to be different from our family is really an opposition shaped by them.

Marilyn Gear Pilling’s On Huron’s Shore is a collection of linked short stories threaded together to tell the tale of one Ontario family. Told from the perspective of the oldest sister, Lexie, it begins with the memories of a child. The reader is quickly reminded of a time when toddlers freely climbed from the front seat to the back of a car, from mother’s lap to siblings, while driving down the road, a time when children played on hills and dirt piles on streets not yet scarred by development. The first part of the book is a mixture of vibrant descriptions and harsh realizations of what goes on behind closed doors. It is where we are introduced to the forces that will shape Lexie’s adult life. The first chapter, “Tomatoes,” captures the dynamics of this family of five. The father is a man who gallops to the garden before dinner to “pluck eight or so large tomatoes from their stem” (3-4) so he can slice and eat them before dinner has even begun. He performs all his actions with enthusiasm and purpose. Lexie’s mother, on the other hand, is one not easily impressed and reminds me of my grandmother in her vigilance to ensure outside appearances never reveal the true dysfunction of her family. The contrast between Lexie’s father and mother is highlighted after Lexie receives 100% on a spelling test. While her mother’s response is “don’t blat that mark of yours all over the neighbourhood” (p. 61), her father helps prepare her for the upcoming spelling bee, “he works hard to make his children stick out above the multitudes” (p. 63). But this contrast is not meant to see one as bad and one as good; rather, it’s who they are (and who any of us are is always more complex than what meets the eye).

I didn’t want the childhood narratives to end but just as children must grow up, so did I have to move on to the next two parts of the book. Each story reveals little anecdotes of family, sometimes about the need for intimacy and sometimes about the need to push as hard as one can in the opposite direction. Gathered together they delve into the influences that relationships, both chosen and forced, have on all of us – how the complexities of who we are come to be. The stories transition smoothly and with little repetition. Lexie’s intimate, inner thoughts about her family are revealed to the reader with the essence of journal entries not meant to be read by outsiders. We see Lexie grow from the kid who understands life in the literal and sometimes misunderstood way of children, “their mother explains this behavior by saying their father was marked by the depression. Lexie has seen the depression. It’s a sharp dip in the farm lane. If their mother is driving, their father always warns her to ‘slow down for the depression’” (p.9), into one who has awareness of the big picture, the abstract, life beyond the what exists in the moment as it is right now, “some day my mother and father and Aunt Bea and Uncle Tommy and Ephram and Aunt Anna will be dead . . . Somebody else is going to live here. When I’m old, I’ll come back to Aunt Bea’s and everybody will be gone” (p74).  This is the first time she understands life beyond her family boarders. It’s the beginning of a passage that will witness the elder generation of the family become the ancestors and the children become the mothers and fathers, the grandmothers and grandfathers. From this moment Lexie has no choice but to move into a world of awareness that one can never turn back from, ready or not.

Born and raised in Calgary, Crystal has been writing for over fifteen years. She studied creative writing in both fiction and poetry at Mount Royal University. She writes out of her childhood home where a postcard view of downtown and the Rocky Mountains often distracts her. Other welcomed distractions in her life are her daughter’s ever evolving views on humanity, listening to her talented partner Ryan read drafts of his own work, and wine. Crystal is most inspired in her own writing when exploring the Rocky Mountains or the banks of the Bow River.

The post Crystal Mackenzie’s Book Review of “On Huron’s Shore” by Marilyn Gear Pilling appeared first on FreeFall Magazine.

What I learned about performing from Ivan Coyote:

Ryan and I attended the Wordfest Workshop: “Writing for Performance with Ivan Coyote” back in October 2014. Ivan is one of Ryan’s favourite performing artists, so as soon as we realized that Thomas King and Ivan Coyote would be in Banff Friday night and Saturday afternoon respectively, there was no discussion as to what we would be doing that weekend.

Full disclosure: I’m a social klutz. The thought of speaking in front of a crowd doesn’t actually scare me like it once did, but I bumble like I’m twelve years old none-the-less. I remember being terrified when I had to participate in a mock parliamentary debate in high school. I nailed my argument in a way no one else had but I shook the whole time. It’s frustrating to be so confident and still trip over my own tongue, or worse, to have my systematic mind start circling mid-sentence (think of standing in a circle of people at a party, arguing with yourself under your breath, when mid-argument you get very very loud). Being painfully aware of all this I thought “writing for performing” is just what I need. I envy those who get up and share their work, but, “ack,” no way am I doing THAT!

Ivan was fantastic – confident and honest. Ivan had tips I never would have thought of and yet they were practical and simple. The kinds of things I can’t believe I didn’t think of. This is what I learned from Ivan Coyote (this is not an exhausted list of everything Ivan taught that day. Ivan worked hard at this workshop and I feel it would be unfair, without permission, to share it all for free. Most of what’s written here are my thoughts that came out of Ivan’s lessons):

1. The stage is an exchange – powerful and vulnerable at the same time:

 What’s that old saying? You get back what you put in.
 

2. Why do you remember the performances you remember:

Energy is probably one of the number one aspects that creates a memorable performance for me, that and audience engagement. Not stand-up comic style engagement, but the subtle body movement a dancer directs towards the crowd. Most observers have no conscious idea it just happened and yet they are pulled into the performance just that little bit deeper. Great burlesque, Rufus Wainwright’s cover of “Chelsea Hotel,” or Ivan Coyote’s story telling voice do this.
 

3. Always remember the tech’s name:

Did I not say there was some simply practical advice coming? As the daughter of a floor layer, I know to appreciate the work of the person behind the scenes (or under your feet), and still this was probably the best advice I got that day.
 

4. Get to your performance early – fires that need to be extinguished won’t happen in 5 minutes. But with time, everything is fixable:

I have this weird, deep, psychological pull to never get too ahead of any task. I am the worst procrastinator. I know how bad leaving things to the last minute can be for the stress level of anyone and everyone and I do it all the time.
 

5. Before a performance, take some time for yourself:

Don’t be that tornado that whirls in the door straight from work, downing a fruit smoothie, heart racing, and mind pounding because you are sure you’ve forgotten something in your other bag…oh no, you wanted to wear the red shoes and they’re in the car three blocks away.
 

6. Eat two or three hours before your performance:

Nothing’s worse than debating what excuse will allow you an extra five minutes in the bathroom without suspicion. I can’t think of anything that creates indigestions faster than nerves and a full belly.
 

7. Drink water all day:

You know that person who’s talking to you at work and all you can hear is the saliva in his mouth. The slapping, clicking, thick, slick sound? Don’t be “that guy.”
 

8. Be kind to the staff. Be the example you want others to be:

P.S. that sound guy from earlier, he’s your co-worker not your subordinate.

9. Prepare less time then asked. You’ll always go over your prepared time:

And if you’re as nervous as me, prepare half the time.

10. Read the other readers, what did they do? Be ready to possibly change your idea:

Ivan spoke of a time they were part of a line of performers and realized the mood of what they had prepared was drastically different than the atmosphere the crowd was absorbed in, so they changed the performance to fit the mood of the show.

11. Know and respect your equipment:

Need to loosen or tighten a boom stand? Righty tighty, lefty loosey. Even the technical stuff is simple if you just get there early enough to be relaxed to think about it for a second.

12. Make performance copies that are easy for you to read without flipping pages all the time. A music stand is a great set up:

Going back to that be early and respectful of the staff. It’s very easy to get a music stand if people have the time to get one for you. Rushing in last minute and demanding a music stand because no way are you using that podium, may get you the crappiest music stand in the building. You’ll know there were better ones available when you hear the staff snickering every time the stand slides down on you causing you to stop, pull it back up, and righty tighty it into place.

Now I just need a workshop titled “print off your stories, put a stamp on an envelope, and mail out your work so you can be invited to make a public appearance in which you can use all you learned from Ivan Coyote.”  But kidding aside, Ivan’s workshop was more impactful than I expected it to be. Ivan made what is simple, simple. And as cliché as it may sound, it emphasized the fact that the people I admire performing are artists like me. They also get nervous but they don’t let it stop them from sharing their art with others.

Born and raised in Calgary, Crystal has been writing for over fifteen years. She studied creative writing in both fiction and poetry at Mount Royal University. She writes out of her childhood home where a postcard view of downtown and the Rocky Mountains often distracts her. Other welcomed distractions in her life are her daughter’s ever evolving views on humanity, listening to her talented partner Ryan read drafts of his own work, and wine. Crystal is most inspired in her own writing when exploring the Rocky Mountains or the banks of the Bow River.

The post Writing for Performance appeared first on FreeFall Magazine.

As I discussed Weyman’s question with my partner I found I wasn’t just asking ‘why read poetry,’ but when do I read poetry versus fiction and even more predominate in our discussion was when do I write poetry instead of fiction? Both art forms, the short story and the poem, are very similar in many regards. Both are pieces of communication, both tell a story, both can tease the line between fiction and non-fiction, and both can be very intimate for reader and writer. In terms of space, the short story and the poem both require little to say what they need to say, but, the poem has a way of not only using small amounts of page space, but also less word space and conscious mental space; there is more said in what is not said in the sentences and words, in the lingering moments between stanzas of a poem. I realize that in terms of page space less is more is not always entirely accurate for of course there are poems that physically take up more space than others such as the prose poem, and the epic poem, and poems that take up two and three pages while there are short stories that take up only one. However, and this is part of an ongoing conversation I’ve had with numerous writers, despite the varying form options a poem has to be written in, there is still something about a poem that tells the reader they are in a poem. The formatting, the structure of the verse, the choices made when removing verbs or articles from the writing, the mental space the poem swells into, all play a part. Sometimes it’s clear and sometimes it’s not that obvious. I can’t speak to what it is exactly but I can feel it and maybe that’s the only way I can truly answer Weyman’s question and my own questions it stirred up, with how I feel it.

In both a short story and in a poem, every word matters, every sound and syllable is connected to one another. So what does a poem do that a story does not? Or maybe more accurately, what does a poem do that a piece of fiction can do but very differently. I’ve always felt that the poem creates a close, fast relationship with the reader. The way traveling to Northern Alberta in the winter, with ten almost strangers on a small bus, sleeping on a cabin floor side by side, create fast relationships. It can be uncomfortable and intimate. Sometimes the tension is palpable; sometime you have to look back on the small moments to really understand the experience. When I’m reading poetry, I settle into the ‘hmm’ of it quickly, the satisfied moment of the final word, but then I sit with it and think. When I write poetry I tend to write it fast with a surge of inspiration behind me. Of course the editing comes later, but it’s a feeling, often sensual and unmistakable, that drives the force of the poem. When I write short stories, on the other hand, I’ve often been thinking about the idea for a while and I have random notes written in my journal to go with those thoughts. My drive is with the satisfaction that comes when a body of work is carefully inspected and understood. Not so much that the act of writing becomes clinical and dry, but just enough that I feel the intimacy that comes from knowing exactly how the body will respond to my manipulation and to know when my choices are no longer driving the work forward.

The differences of how I write poetry and short stories often affect how I read them. I can’t help but expect a different relationship with each form. I will pick up a poetry book at any moment and read one or two poems and then put it down for later but I like to take my short stories to bed with me. I like poetry that places contrasting images and ideas in a direct relationship. That doesn’t mess around. Where a short story can take it’s time connecting the dots, building the reader up slowly (but not as slowly as a well-executed novel) the poem doesn’t wait for the reader to catch up, to remember the dark eyed stranger on the train from the beginning of the story when she reappears at your kitchen table at the end. I like a poem that gets to the point – that doesn’t have time to fumble around. A quick afternoon orgasm or two, versus the built up release of a late night tryst with a new lover. The poem knows it way around and it gets there. I like a short story to take it’s time with me the same way I will take my time with it. When I read a short story, I don’t want to know all of its tricks right away and when I write one, I enjoy learning what makes the story tick before I settle into it.

I write poetry when it’s personal, when the emotions of an idea are stronger than the idea itself. I write fiction when my mind is as invested as my body. Often my personal attachment to a story is further away than in poetry but that doesn’t mean it’s any less intimate. And so I end with more ways the two are alike than different: They are both a platform to convey ideas that are sometimes emotional and raw. They can be political, spiritual, and whimsical. They like to have a little fun with both the audience and the writer while simultaneously making them think. They can strip reader and writer naked, leaving them vulnerable and questioning everything they thought was safe. They are extensions of who we are as people and what it means to be human. They are love letters, cries for help, circulating out in the world, and locked in desk drawers. Because my relationship with the two art forms is so different it wouldn’t be fair to say I write one over the other. It’s never a decision based on better or worse and it doesn’t even depend on how much wine I’ve had, it just depends on my sensibilities in that moment I pick up my pen.

Born and raised in Calgary, Crystal has been writing for over fifteen years. She studied creative writing in both fiction and poetry at Mount Royal University. She writes out of her childhood home where a postcard view of downtown and the Rocky Mountains often distracts her. Other welcomed distractions in her life are her daughter’s ever evolving views on humanity, listening to her talented partner read drafts of his own work, and wine. Crystal is most inspired in her own writing when exploring the Rocky Mountains or the banks of the Bow River. Exclusive FreeFall Blog Content!

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The Hungry Ghosts
By Shyam Selvadurai
Doubleday Canada (2013)
ISBN: 978-0-385-67066-1
$29.95

Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts tells the tale of a young Sri Lankan man named Shivan Rassiah. Growing up amongst civil unrest and violence, this story follows his journey as he tries to learn his place in the wheel of Samsara and accept the Karma of this life. His father’s death is the catalyst that catapults him into his grandmother’s home where money and control are at his fingertips but choices are few. He tries to escape this fate by leaving Sri Lanka only to find his new homeland Canada is not the haven from himself he thought it would be. Shivan is caught between the responsibility of his mother and sister, the expectations of his grandmother, and the hardships of living as a homosexual in an unaccepting society. Shivan’s Grandmother, “despite her sternness, had a girlish love of” (18) Buddhist tales. These tales weave their way throughout the novel, mimicking and mirroring the lives of the characters.

Selvadurai captures my attention right away. He fills his novel with subtle yet beautiful details of love, passion, anger and fear. Each character comes alive and I felt emotionally connected, one way or another, to them all. The grandmother character is especially unique; she is strong and poignant from the first page. A Sinhales woman with much wealth, she is “a woman who had others carry things for her” (3). She is a force throughout the story whose power to dictate the lives of the other characters, across oceans and time, is sadly fantastic. Though, she overestimates her grandson’s reverence to her:

my grandmother stepped over the photograph as if she had not even noticed it, and I understood that she was so confident of her dominance she did not fear my judgement…that was the moment, as I now recall it, when my betrayal of her began (11).

But he misjudges her as well, and this misjudgement of each other affects them both in ways they could never imagine: her economic greed and his emotional greed has a rippling effect reaching many lives and ultimately results in Shivan’s unhappiness instead of the freedom he is so desperate to find.

But in the end, it is the character Shivan whom I fell in love with. He is a foreigner in the land he escaped from and the land he escaped to. He is a wanderer between political and racial lines. He experiences passion and love like I’ve rarely seen written, and despite this passion and love, he is the saddest character I’ve ever read. His innocence is in juxtaposition to his experience–his happiness shadowed by pain, guilt and obligation. He thinks he can protect those he loves from who he is and what his family represents in both Sri Lanka and in Canada, but he should know better. In neither country is he ever afforded the freedoms he desires, and in both places he must suffer consequences he tries so desperately to avoid. I want to hug him and shake him at the same time. I want to protect him from himself and his grandmother while never stifling who he is. It’s an almost impossible feat that I am still struggling to accept.

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Born and raised in Calgary, Crystal has been writing for over fifteen years and studied creative writing at Mount Royal University. She engages with her daughter’s ever evolving views on the world, while enjoying wine and a postcard view of the mountains with her talented partner, Ryan. Crystal is most inspired in her own writing when exploring the Rocky Mountains or the banks of the Bow River.

The post Book Review of “The Hungry Ghost” by Shyam Selvadurai appeared first on FreeFall Magazine.

Hellgoing
by Lynn Coady
House of Anansi Press (2013)
ISBN: 978-1-77089-308-5
$19.95

We are all going to hell–or so they say–in a tightly woven basket. But is this a fate saved for after death or the constant state we live? Lynn Coady’s book Hellgoing is a collection of short stories of people experiencing their own personal hell, if only for a short while. Each story is a glimpse into the lives of diverse people from all over Canada. People with depth and purpose and people whose past and present are in conflict. I was hooked from the first two lines, “Jan salutes you from an age where to be an aficionado is to find yourself foolishly situated in the world. Where to care a great deal about something, no matter how implicitly interesting it may be, is to come across as a kind of freak” (3). This witty language is carried throughout the first story and by the end I couldn’t wait to experience the rest of the book. The book goes on to explore people who try not to care, or at the very least, remain indifferent, to their own personal hells, but who only succeed at fooling themselves. I think Coady says it best in the story “The Natural Elements” when she writes, “it seemed only Cal was aware that the moment the thing came free of the hook, it would fall backwards, shattering on top of both their heads” (160). Like Cal, the reader is watching the obvious unfold while those closest to the calamity are oblivious to the consequences their actions will eventually create.

Despite what could be a gloomy set of stories, Coady creates nine very different worlds in which gloom rarely enters. Yes, each character is incredibly dysfunctional–who isn’t–but they drink, laugh, avoid and over-analyze the same way most of us deal with strife. Each world felt honest, like I had been dropped into lives already in progress and when the story was over, these lives would continue on. Some of the people I was invited to peak in on include: a newly married couple annoyed with their fully paid for destination wedding because the groom can’t spank his bride in the bondage style they have grown accustomed to; another couple, Kim and Hart, whose conscious decision to be in love has left Kim missing the man Hart was before she fell in love with him; and one of my favourites, a nun who does(n’t) care about the girl starving herself in the name of God.

Coady’s writing is fresh and her characters are intriguing. It’s easy to see why this book was not only nominated for the 2013 Giller Prize, but the winner. With honesty and ease she fills her stories with the simple complexities that make up life; the kinds of experiences that seem so pertinent in the moment they happen, but are often forgotten about. Moments like the one in “Mr. Hope,” where a young girl, Shelly, tells how she “discovered [she] could read inside [her] head. Everyone else in my class could only read out loud, and not even well . . . I gasped: Teacher, look! And held up the book to my face and said nothing” (195). Coady’s writing had me laughing out loud, reading passages to my partner, and empathizing with unsympathetic characters. This is a book we should all make space for on our bookshelves; that way, if we are slipping slowly into hell, at the very least we’ll have some interesting people to take with us.

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