KnuckleHead and Other Stories

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

W. Mark Giles’s fiction has appeared in The Malahat Review, The New
Quarterly, and Canadian Fiction Magazine, among other periodicals. In
this, his first collection of stories, he seems most comfortable when
exploring lower-middle-class angst. Trapped in their mundane settings
(the mall, the office tower, and the subdivision), Giles’s characters
are like coiled springs, their longing and disillusionment laid bare
when the dark underbelly of the ordinary world is revealed.

I especially like the three stories—linked under the title
“KnuckleHead”—that follow a young couple, Beverley and Colm,
through the gestation, infancy, and childhood of their daughter,
building to a wonderful climax. Other noteworthy tales include the
finely crafted “Al’s Book of the Dead,” the story of a salesman
with a secret passion for documenting the deaths of his friends, and the
tension-filled “Ledge,” in which a man debates with himself whether
or not to leap off a high building.

We owe a debt to small Canadian presses like Anvil Press for bringing
exciting new fiction—such as Giles’s debut collection—to light.