Habits and Love

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

There is something for everyone in these nine stories—everyone, that
is, who likes to read tales that are bittersweet and tender, fluent with
sudden revelatory moments, and who enjoys characters less for their own
sake than for their symbolism.

Schumacher says that his writing is about the “regional experiences
of small-town people.” He nevertheless achieves a kind of universality
with his short, controlled fictions, which are reminiscent of early
Alice Munro in their graceful turns of phrase. “Without knowing it,”
he says in the opening of “Boys and Arrows,” “we had somehow
gotten older.” And so the simple safety of playing toy soldier gives
way to more dangerous pursuits. And sometimes, as in the longest story,
“Acts of Forgiveness,” very little action takes place—a youngish
Canadian couple rescues a long-lost brother from a jail in Montana and
discovers that habits, bad or good or just the ones that make you
uncomfortable, are the last thing you bargain for in other people.

Schumacher teaches English at Red Deer College. One hopes that he is
able to instill in his students’ writing the same techniques of
understatement and humour that his own stories so often display. This is
his first book; we will be looking for more.