Shooting the Stars

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 novella is an underrated fiction form, often treated as nothing more
than a padded-out short story or an unfinished novel the author has
given up on. With these three works, Metcalf proves that the novella is
a form of fiction that deserves respect in its own right.

Three exceptional stories are contained in this one book. Although they
were written over a span of nearly 20 years and vary slightly in
structure, all are uniformly crisp in style and workmanship. The first
novella concerns a young schoolteacher who discovers that his romantic
partner has a habit of selling other people’s property. The second
work is about a recently divorced middle-aged man who, against his
better judgment, allows a friend to submit his name to a computer
matchmaking service. The third story concerns a middle-aged man who is
trying to come to terms with his upbringing as the son of a nonentity
father and domineering mother. Metcalf is always probing with his
satire, looking for an abscess of middle-class neurosis—once he finds
it, he goes for the root with a power drill.

If Metcalf could occupy himself with fiction only, he would do both
himself and his readers a favor. Unfortunately, in every Metcalf work
there always seems to be an introductory diatribe about what it is like
to be one of Canada’s greatest undiscovered talents. Whether written
by one of his disciples or by Metcalf himself, these diatribes insult
the reader’s intelligence. In this volume, the harangue is delivered
by Michael Darling, who carefully lays down the rules by which the
following novellas will be read. He is even kind enough to point out the
most choice bits, and why they are choice. Writing of this calibre needs
no introduction; readers of this genre need no harangue.