Small Regrets

Gerald Noonan was Associate Professor of English at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, and co-editor of A Public and Private Voice.

In this first collection of short stories, Dave Margoshes sets forth his craft and potential as a writer.

The opening story (in the key of F as it were) and its male protagonist get right to the point: he approaches any female he fancies, asks to have sex, and pays $5,000 in return for the favour, or rental, as he puts it. The story’s title, “The Same Thing,” indicates the rich young man’s philosophy of human relations. “One Too Many Mornings,” on the other hand, is as lyrical in its sexuality as the first is flat and mechanical: an adult couple loll naked in the sun recalling their first childish sexual exploration and bring both their innocence and experience to bear amid tinkling bells, a windmill, and tickling grass.

The remaining nine stories range in subject matter from rural to Reno, from Jewish businessmen to graduate students. In them a male intellectual is often insensitive but at the same time remorseful, regretful, of his inability to feel more deeply.

Margoshes is deft with dialogue, pace, and description. Too often, though, he studs his prose with over-reaching metaphor: a farming daughter inthe strong story “On An April Morning” calls an innocuous greeting across the yard to her bereaved father and: “her words punctured the day like shining knives and sunk, soundlessly, to the ground at his feet, leaving a terrible void.”

The best story, “Among Strangers,” has the least metaphor. Three middle-aged brothers visit their aged Jewish mother at the nursing home where she lives — against the wishes of Morton, one of the sons, who thinks his mother would be less apt to deteriorate if she lived with her own family. When the mother refuses to drive out to a restaurant — they’ll have to walk, she says —because it’s the eve of the Sabbath, the eldest brother lies to her, insisting that her mind is confused, that it isreally Thursday, not Friday. He calls upon the others and their wives to support his claim.

Morton, in his moment of truth, ponders the icy winds blowing outside, the thought of having their family celebration in the cafeteria, and “‘Yes,’ he said softly, ashamed. ‘It’s Thursday’.”