Telling My Love Lies

Claire Wilkshire is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of
British Columbia.

Keath Fraser’s third collection of short fiction is based on an
unusual premise. A reading group is foundering: discussions have grown
dull, and members cannot agree on what to read next. Someone suggests
that they each write a story. Telling My Love Lies is a fictional
collection—a series of stories allegedly written by the book club’s
members. It comes complete with a foreword by “Patricia Melmouth”
and with comments and biographical notes from each “author.” Linking
the stories is the fictional community of Perumbur, home of a few cows,
hundreds of discarded tires, and an eclectic assortment of residents.

This book is about the telling of stories, the telling of lies. “My
Honour, Your Honour” takes the form of a series of monologues
addressed to a judge by a man accused of Nazi war crimes and his lawyer.
As it turns out, the monologues are not spoken in court but composed by
the defendant after he has been convicted; he invents not only what he
would like to have said during the trial, but also the speeches his
lawyer might have made. The title story is the finest; in it, a man with
Alzheimer’s has his past filled in, reinvented, by his wife: “What
your father and I have in common these days,” she tells her son, “is
what I say we have.”

This is a thoughtful book that deploys language with energy and
intelligence.