Tanganyika

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The title of this book is taken from the last of the 13 short stories it
contains. Why Brett chose this title instead of any of the other 12 is
not explained to the reader. This is representative of Brett’s style;
he does not trouble with rational explanation; things just are the way
they are and the reader need not dwell on the fact overly long.

Brett’s stories, singularly or in collection, defy pigeonholing. He
glides over the realms of surrealism, horror, science fiction, and
gothic/Hemingway without actually setting foot anywhere.

Pain seems to be how Brett wants us to know we are alive. His stories
are strewn with little hard nuggets of pain that the reader stumbles on
barefoot and unforewarned. His stories are witty, sometimes dazzling,
but only a masochist could call them pretty.

In some ways, however, Brett’s undeniable skills as a writer are
honed to the point of being intrusive. He is like the master chef who
cannot, even when he needs to, burn a crepe. The result is that
Brett’s main characters seem to speak with the same voice—a
writer’s voice. A government lawyer, for example, seems only a lawyer
because Brett says he is. In voice and thought, he is indistinguishable
from the high-school coach in another story who is ruining himself with
drink and adultery.

Despite the amazing diversity of settings, characters, and plots this
collection of stories suffers from a tendency towards “sameness.” It
is a forgivable flaw, especially after one has read collections of short
stories that seem to have been written by either government lawyers or
drunken high-school coaches. Tanganyika is a fine collection of short
stories, with or without the burned crepe.