Blackouts.

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Victorian author Craig Boyko is both skilled and fortunate. In 2007, his short story “OZY” won the Journey Prize, an award granted by McClelland & Stewart for the best literary magazine fiction. That major publisher placed it in a compilation with 10 of his other stories to produce Blackouts. This collection has since been nominated for the 2009 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for the Best First Book published in Canada or the Caribbean.

Unfortunately for Boyko, no one gives awards for some of his more unique achievements. In “Holes,” he expertly outlines the rationale that leads Garnet, a recovering alcoholic ex-restaurant owner, to relapse by drinking his old college friend/employer’s liquor. The most telling example of a euphemism is found in “White Crows,” a World War II drama about a British professional skeptic named Plummer. He meets an ex-veterinarian and her daughter, whose pet “ran away.” The father explains, “Many pets had to run away because of the war … [s]o many, they were piling up outside my clinic.” Only aware readers and dutiful critics value these original views of rehabilitation or euthanasia. Actual awards are given for consistent excellence; “OZY” won its prize for slyly exploring the inner world of the teenage video gamer. The adult reader can empathize with the recreation-obsessed preteen player without loss of dignity.

Stalin’s Soviet Union is dissected in “Nadeshda Pavlovna,” which follows a state rent collector named Ippolitsky. The USSR’s terror is subtly recreated—its residents are too afraid to acknowledge their society’s privations. In this context, the purge that hits the protagonist’s bureau is more historical horror than inevitable cliché. The last two narratives, “Black Ink” and “Past Lives,” feature retired prairie businessman Lloyd Pembroke at different stages in his life. Is this a trial run for a forthcoming novel? The fact that one can ask this question means that Craig Boyko’s fiction is good enough to spark interest in his upcoming projects.