Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

"Bob Munroe woke up on his face." So begins 'The Brown Coast', the first in this delectable collection of short stories from Canadian author, Wells Tower. The implication here is that Bob has fallen on his face and spent the night there, but it turns out Bob may have fallen on his face quite some time ago, and as in the paragraph that follows, finds that getting back up off it isn't straight-forward. The theme of this story, of finding the bottom with your face, isn't the only one in the collection, but we do see it a few times: Jacey certainly goes there in 'Wild America', and it's pretty much the forwarding address for the characters in 'On The Show'.

The characters in all these stories are bulging - bursting, engorged, overflowing, even - in a masterfully understated way so that you never feel like you're getting to know them, but rather that they just are. Never is this more obvious though than in the title story, the last in the collection. Here, the protagonist, Harald - a Viking, naturally - is just another guy, tired of raping and pillaging, with ambitions to spend some time with his common law wife, Pila, 'hoping to get through some lovemaking before the Haycutting Month was underway and see if I couldn't make us a little monkey.' Oh, cute Viking!

There's a slightly corrosive sexual undercurrent in almost all of these stories, though. Harald might be bang up for some lovemaking, but he's done his fair share of raping, too, one suspects. Sometimes this malevolent sexuality is latent, like in 'Executors of Important Energies' - classic 'dad takes up with younger woman who young son then proceeds to fantasise about'. Mostly thought, it's overt, and with one exception - the old man in 'Door In Your Eye' who is prompted to go and visit his neighbour because he thinks she's a prostitute - sex is never a good motivator. And it's almost never pretty - take the child who, with the permission of her mother and step-father, will, on long journeys, wrap her lips around the gearstick because 'the vibrations relax her' - thanks 'Down In The Valley', for that heart-warming image. And, while uncomfortable, it's believable that your affable, everyday peado in "On The Show" is just an opportunist with a knack for timing, much like the other bloke in that story who darts in and out of the spaces you and I don't consider. It's seedy, without being dark. And it's illuminating, without being nauseating. Cue applause.

From the first story to the last, this collection is a joy and a triumph. Of course, saying that, it could be quite dispiriting in terms of the reality of the world it reflects, but also it could not. It's up to you, really, what you chose to do with 'Leopard' - the story of a teenage boy, told in the second person, on the art of pulling a sickie when your assholish step-dad is watching your every move. And you can make what you like of 'Retreat' - where the real estate investor brother, exiled by property tax law to a mountain in the country, extends an invitation to his music therapist brother to spend sometime with him there, where beautiful things are sometimes sick but killing them will only poison you.

There are so, so many memorable, share-worthy sentences and passages in these stories, but I will leave you to discover these for yourself. Because, at some point, you will read this book, and you will wish to God you were Wells Tower, because that would be so much better than being in the confusing position of being you - loving him on the one hand, but also hating him for being so much more awesome than you - it's confronting. You'll read these stories, and you'll think, 'Yep, thems some words smooshed together in pleasing, smarty-pants kinda ways, no? Oh, yesssss.' And then you'll consider the words you've just thought and think, 'Oh yeah, I see the contrast now: Screw you, Wells.'

Thanks for the HOTT tip, Soph.