The Biggest Animals.

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

A reviewer of Kenyon’s first novel, Kleinberg (Oolichan Books, 1991), noted that he “is able to bring the reader directly into Morgan’s [one of the characters] mind, as well as the minds of other characters, using changes in time and stream of consciousness narrative technique.” Much the same can be said of the author’s fifth work of fiction (he has also written four books of poetry). The Biggest Animals is really two stories, one woven inside the other; the narrative moves along in a series of 158 blocks of scenes (cinematic scenes, since the story deals with creating a movie out of a novel). The narrative deals, too, with the darkly erotic relationships among Sam Gentles, the novelist, his poet wife, Mary, and the director of the movie, Herb Thedal. Other major participants are Thor, the composer of the movie’s score, and his daughter, Charlotte.

Sam’s story, Flooded Fields, tells the story of Rosa Pryznyk, who escapes war-torn Poland in 1919, first to New York and then to Montreal. Along the way she becomes a prostitute, terminating her own pregnancy, and then, in Montreal, an abortionist, assisting “girls with nowhere to go” terminate theirs. As in Kleinberg, there are ghosts inhabiting the story. Rosa flashes back to her dismal life in America, memories of her dysfunctional family and friends. Ghosts also wander freely through the memories of the modern characters, the movie makers, sometimes interspersed with Rosa’s life, more often with their own. Kenyon’s experiments with narrative structure and voice work more often than not. When they do, there is a powerful rendering of character—parallels among the participants who move in and out of emotional danger. When they do not work there is instead a muddying of emotions and a plotline that meanders and is often lost.

Kenyon has long been a part of the Vancouver Island writing scene. He presently makes his home in Vancouver and on Pender Island. He also has a private practice combining Jin Shin Do acupressure and process-oriented psychology.