Vancouver Fiction

Bruce K. Filson was a freelance writer and critic residing in Chesterville, Ontario.

There’s simply not enough good original reading in this “baker’s dozen of literary confections.” There are only five stories that you won’t find elsewhere. And four of the stories are novel excerpts, a form that, unless it is brilliant stylistically, leaves too much unsaid in the story format where so much is already unsaid. There are no new brilliant stylists here. Hors d’oeuvre never really satisfy.

All of the stories deal with some sort of dynamic between two, sometimes three or four, people. There’s lots of dialogue and a sense that people — even people close to each other — just cannot connect or understand each other. A few stories deliver the goods: those by Audrey Thomas, Keath Fraser, David Watmough, and Robert Harlow. Harlow’s story portrays the insurmountable barriers of age difference. Fraser’s story, in the hard-edged style of an Ann Beattie, conveys the loose and lost modern feeling. Watmough’s piece divides ordinary people from people with a cause. There’s also a witty little piece by D.M. Fraser which in this book is like a hair in the soup.

Vancouver Fiction is beautifully produced, with a cover illustration by Jack Shadbolt. Sadly, it fails to achieve that sense of completeness or uniqueness that makes an anthology special. Nor does it capture a presence that would singularly define Vancouver.