Revved

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Revved, which consists of six short stories, offers much good reading
for senior-school readers. Despite its macabre-sounding title, the
collection’s opening story, “The Euthanasia Party,” is actually
quite humorous. When the story’s unnamed 17-year-old narrator must
babysit Amy, his younger sister, during his parents’ weekend absence,
he is forced to cancel the unauthorized party he had planned. However,
some “guests” still arrive and become involved in the attempted
euthanasia of Amy’s ailing pet hamster.

In “The Gene Thief,” Jode Mullen loses his girlfriend to his
“irresistible to girls” cousin. Containing a story within the story,
“The Eulogy” is the only piece with a female central character.
Distance cyclist Alexandra discontinues her ride to Victoria upon
learning of her father’s disappearance and likely drowning. “The
Assignment” begins with the script of a school assignment video shot
by two guys and a girl and then switches to prose as Ian Gleason, the
odd man out in the romantic triangle, explains how the video came to be.
“Grad Night” is a slice-of-life piece involving five adolescents on
the evening of their graduation from a small prairie community high
school. The unusual addition of an epilogue updates readers on what has
happened to the quintet since graduation.

At 65 pages long, the final story, “Finding Out Tara,” might be
better classified as a novella. When Michael MacLeod, 18, learns that
his mother is dying from cancer, he sets off to find his sister, Tara,
who left home two years before when she was just 14. After five days on
the road, Michael locates Tara on Christmas Eve and discovers more than
just the physical Tara. Highly recommended.