Customer Reviews

Grab Bag (Little House on the Bowery)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

That New York's Akashic Books has had the wisdom to publish these stories by Derek McCormack is a happy gift to US readers. He has been a national treasure of Canada for some years, and now he can be ours as well. The stories are sharply told, fables crafted to within an inch of their lives by a stylist so obsessive he reminds me of one of those crotchety perfectionists who builds the London Bridge out of toothpicks over sixty years. At least it's a bridge.

At any rate, McCormack's writing is so precise it burns a hole right through you. These little sentences, pared down to stilettos that pierce the heart.

When I compile a short list of the writers whose work means most to me, he's usually on the list someplace. The stories in "Wish Book" are uniformly nasty but varied otherwise in tone, intention, mood. The older stories, from "Dark Rides," have I think a bit more melancholy and a different conception of formal experiment. Which you will prefer depends on your mood. As the French say, especially in Canada, "c'est bonnet blanc et blanc bonnet" (half a dozen of one, six of the other). I wish Amazon gave out more stars than 5. Let's see.

Derek McCormack is the leading author of what might be called the Canadian Gothic. Grab Bag is a pairing of short novels by McCormack that have never before published in the USA. Both of these novellas are set in the desolate landscape of rural northern Canada.

The first part of Grab Bag is titled Dark Rides and is about a teenager in the 1950's who has weird sexual fantasies. The second part, Wish Book, reads more like a collection of closely collected stories than a unified novella. This part is also about a teenager obsessed with fantasizing about sex who does not actually have any except that it is set during the Great Depression.

Other than the Canadian setting, Grab Bag is classic gothic.

Derek McCormack's GRAB BAG is literally a magic bag full of tricks and treats. One of the best books I've read all year, McCormack collects both his short novellas into his first U.S. release.

McCormack writes about dark and precocious young characters and takes written snapshots of their dark fantasies and abrupt interactions with the world around them. This world is set in rural Canada, in a Halloweenesque wonderland. McCormack's prose is short and sweet, detailing the sexual fantasies of a gay teenager, absurd morality tales of psychiatric trips and haunted hay rides.

GRAB BAG is amazingly complex and multi-layered. Yet, the book is an easy read. The prose is short, abrupt and to the point. The only details are the necessary ones. In a way, GRAB BAG feels like an experiment, spoken word fiction without poetic beats. McCormack is a master with his short-short fiction, able to introduce and submerge the reader in crisis and an unsentimental conclusion within a few paragraphs. I wouldn't trade it in for the world.

"Grab Bag" contains two novels from Canadian author Derek mcCormack. The first -- "Dark Ride" -- weaves the tale of a young gay man learning about his sexuality and trying to find love. The main character's rage at the world and himself comes through flawlessly. The second novel -- "Wish Book" -- tells the story of a young man trying to make money during the Great Depression by working as a carny then at a department store and finally as a door-to-door salesman.

McCormack's style is very minimal, with words chosen carefully to paint a uniquely dark picture, something akin to a Ray Bradbury story. The problem sometimes, though, is that the style takes precedence over the story, as in "Wish Book" which took me a while to figure out what was going on. Overall, this is a good colleciton of McCormack's novels, with the first being much stronger than the second. An interesting read.