Cottage Gothic

Mike Schultz was a business teacher with the Peel Board of Education.

Martin Avery’s short stories (the book lacks a formal table of contents) all take place in the landscape or headspace of Gravenhurst, sometimes in a surreal style that bounces in and out of reality.

In Hockey Night in Canada, Avery pokes fun at our national obsession. This was a most enjoyable and humorous piece, though I would give the author two minutes for sometimes confusing the reader.

NBSS: The Ugly Brothers could have saved this collection but didn’t. I thought I was in for a vivid expose of the sixties when the story opened: “What did you do in the sexual revolution, Daddy?” I was disappointed, I think because the book is an account of adolescent feelings by a post-adolescent author. It is autobiographical and reads like the stream of uncontrolled consciousness found in a diary.

Avery admits: “All my stories are the same: set in cottage country, they describe an individual who is feeling disturbed to some degree. He decides to do something about it, take a trip, have a holiday... in the end, his contact with the world makes him crazier than ever.” What about the reader?