Customer Reviews

As My Sparks Fly Upward

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A highly recommended collection of eleven short stories featuring equal doses of adventure and nostalgia. Written in a simple but powerful style and punctuated occasionally with pithy and memorable similes and images. "Hadley" evokes nicely the joys and frustrations of a youthful romance. "Continental Divide" and "Under the Bridge" both feature mystery, paranoia, and adventure, coupled with the theme of the potential tenuousness of friendship. Finally, "Where does This Evening Find You" is cleverly written with the interweaving of various characters' experiences.

As My Sparks Fly Upward, the debut from Canadian author Matthew St. Amand, is a collection of short stories rendered with such honesty that I questioned how much was fiction and how much was taken from his own life. This isn't a drawback or criticism of the collection, but rather a supreme compliment.

Throughout the book, St. Amand takes us on a journey not only through Windsor and Dublin, but through the lives - and hearts - of the people roaming these landscapes. He favors first person, which increases the psychic intensity and connection. And rather than concocting outlandish or bizarre plots, he plunges us deep into the minds of his characters who are often at a critical, everyday crossing point.

These seemingly ordinary situations and happenings carry a weight and levity; full-bodied, recognizable, and lovingly rendered with sympathetic appeal. There is no pretension here, none of the Eggers- like over-analyzing or ironic detachment to distance us from the characters. So, in "Best Man", when a best friend who's fully against the impeding wedding has to coax the groom out of his jitters and back down the aisle, the full range of emotion is captured. The appeal of this approach is clearly evident in other stories, such as the pitch-perfect "Hadley", where a near high-schooler meets a beautiful deaf girl in town for the summer. They'll capture your heart as surely as they capture each other's, and the heart-breaking honesty of their fates isn't backed down from, it's shown, and we understand, and then, some of us will recognize pieces of our own lives. He does takes risks and branch out to suspense. In "Under the Bridge" he builds a nerve-wracking story where quicksand sucks in the characters after a seemingly innocuous and innocent discovery.

As a writer, he shows a fearlessness to unveil emotions, and this leads to flashes of utter brilliance, such as in the title story. What could be a rollicking or overly-sentimental tale instead crystallizes into a marvelous celebration of remembrance. It's a stunning story, nestled amongst an overall vibrant collection.

"As My Sparks Fly Upward"
by Matthew St. Amand
published by the Fiction Works.

The title like the eleven short stories in this book is fascinating, compelling and original. The book is about many things, with many constants weaved throughout - beer, music, writing. Yet amongst these the reader will find humor, love, pain, ambiguity and truth, but more importantly this book is about remembering.

Often times it is cynical, "Life's never satisfied sticking it to you until it's blown salt into the wound", yet still offers hope: "life's not about getting by; it's about getting through."

It is about truth found among the lies we tell ourselves. Among the very lies we tell even to our best friend. "Best Man" is full of humor, "It's not that I have no luck with women, my luck is surprisingly good at times - which causes problems when I already have a girlfriend." Matthew St. Amand's characters are sincere, even in their dishonesty. Their dialogue is very natural, you get to know these people, but more importantly you get to feel for these people. You can taste their anguish as one character is faced with the task of talking his best friend out of marriage. A difficult responsibility because "questioning a guy - even your best friend, about the girl he loves is risky."

The imagery is wonderfully original as in "Grudgingly"; "The flares on the highway shoulder seemed to burn in memories rather than warning." The language is both subtly intimate and rich in detail, "she sits next to me, Indian-style, with a knee resting on my thigh."

"Hadley" is the best story in the collection; the characters are genuine, struggling with their own ghosts and the gray playing field of life. The dialogue is wonderful, and the only criticism one could make is the dialogue sounds a little older than the thirteen year-olds in the story. Only a minor point that does not detract from the story's impact. There are many effective one-line poems by the deaf girl Hadley, again beautifully honest:
"Poem for a Broken Heart
Don't Cry."
The author shows us that a single idea can mean many things:
"Things that scare: Being alone."
"Things I like: Being by myself."

Not all of the stories are about day-to-day circumstances, in "Come Out and Play" we meet Wolf Kearney, a rock star whose career spans thirty years. Wolf is not an `ordinary guy' and his stardom puts him just out of reach of the other characters in this book. Yet in the end we realize we all face the same demons, the same ambiguities. Occasionally fate hurls us into more dark, yet thrilling circumstance as in "Under the Bridge". This story is about thinking the unthinkable, knowing something is wrong, "but there are degrees of wrong". The suspense of two friends finding themselves having to smuggle a package across the U.S. / Canadian border is excruciating to witness.

This book is full of ghosts, an ex-girlfriend haunts one man's memory: "I see her curled in a chair by the window, reading - her long hair wrapped in a towel after showering." In a grade school in the story "As My Sparks Fly Upwards", there are more ghosts waiting to be freed, to be resurrected.

These characters aren't losing themselves, but finding themselves, little by little, piece by piece. "As My Sparks Fly Upwards" is about finding the courage to kiss someone, to say what your heart prompts, while ignoring your head. It is about letting go, to be sure something or someone is absolutely gone and discovering that the courage you once found, has once again fled. Like the characters in this book, the reader too will "feel a pang of missing, remembrance."

This is my new favorite book! "As my sparks fly upward" is a great collection of short stories that really grip and entertain their reader. I feel this is especially true if you grew up in South Western Ont. anywhere between the years 1970 and 2002.
I am a big short story fan, because of the way that a good one really makes you think. You finish reading it and think, "What?" or "Oh, my Gosh" St. Amand has a way of doing that with each story. A clever and creative thinker! Until now, my favorite collection of short stories has been "Wilderness Tips" by Margaret Atwood. Both St. Amand and Atwood have a way of putting into words that which was previously wordles for me. Such as, the smell or colour of something so common to me I take it for granted.
My favorite short story of Matthew St. Amand's is "Hadley". This is a sweet, "young love" kind of story with two very mature characters. If you know the cities of Windsor or Guelph, you will undersatnd the problem these two face when their summer vacations are over. I don't want to spoil the story but it is a must read!
I have been suggesting this book to everyone I know. I short story book is also a great way of getting anyone who says "I don't have time to read", to read!

As a new author Matthew St. Amand does a good job of creating some short stories from the "every man" perspective. He takes common ideas, situations, goals and does to them what any of us could have stumbled into in real life if our inhibitions of acting "civilized" hadn't stopped us.

I hope this author continues in his writings. If this is his first published work then I can hardly wait for when he is a master of his craft.

In this first collection by Canadian Matthew St. Amand, the stories are small, nicely drawn and thought-provoking. His young Everymen grapple with familiar bits of life--first love and regret; homesickness; opportunities taken or lost; the consequences of youthful missteps; fame attained, or glimpsed on a gate--and he endows the pieces with subtle, skillful twists that render them unique. His writing is straightforward, but he can turn a phrase with the best of them ("...the school, it seems more like a tomb. Not exactly a tomb, but a place of waiting; a place for ghosts. Waiting for the doors to be flung open and someone to shout, 'I remember! I remember it all!' ...I can almost see Jessica and Jamie and me--our nine-year-old selves--and our classmates gathered beyond the windows, staring, hands outstretched toward the moonlight, toward the stars: those glowing pinpricks of experience, memory.").

My only problem with this book is that the publisher might have done a better job of copy editing. There are a handful of typos, and they can be jarring to grammar nuts like me. Shame on The Fiction Works--St. Amand's work deserves a more conscientious job.

Susan O'Neill, Author: Don't Mean Nothing: Short stories of Viet Nam.