Princes

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.

“To snatch in a moment of courage from the remorseless rush of time, a
passing phase of life . . . and through its movement, its form, and its
colours, reveal the substance of its truth.” That is how Joseph Conrad
described the art of fiction, and that is how Tom Finn approaches his
storytelling. This is not to suggest that Finn’s is a Conradian
achievement, but that he has, with rare ability, snatched “moments of
courage” from his own family experience, and has vivified the truth of
those moments. And the essence of that truth is this: appearances nearly
always belie reality.

In 10 short stories—or family fictions—Finn re-creates moments in
the lives of various “Princes” (Prince being his mother’s maiden
name), nearly always as the narrator saw them but showing in the telling
process just how wrong the narrator sometimes was in his assessment of
them. It is the small, heroic qualities we often miss, in the seemingly
least significant person, that Finn finds attractive and illuminates
with great skill and tenderness. And he succeeds in terms of both
structure—a nongimmicky, mainly third-person, straightforward
narrative—and style, which avoids lavishness but is brilliantly
evocative: “He had TB, young Kevin Dingwell, twenty-seven, with flesh
like a weathered whitewashed paling. When he didn’t shave of a
morning, black hairs—indecorously virile—curled out like tiny wires
on his cheek. His eyes were livid coals in the ashes of his face.”

This book deserves to be widely read: Tom Finn is a “prince” of a
writer.