Waterfalls

Britta Santowski is a freelance writer in Victoria, B.C.

Waterfalls is a collection of 11 previously published short stories, and
introduces two new short stories and a six-part novella. McNamara’s
favorite male protagonist is the Misunderstood Artist. Runner-up is the
Aspiring Academic. Often, the two are combined. His novella, “Home in
the Dark,” orbits around the newly dead artist/academic Trevor. The
first chapter recalls Trevor’s meeting of, and marriage to, the
irresistibly sexy and childlike student Vivian. Later, Vivian has an
affair with Gil, one of Trevor’s aspiring students. Then, in a
conveniently fantastic accident, Vivian dies. The rest of the novella
explores the various lives impacted by the affair, including Trevor’s
daughter Alice, son and failed poet Ned, and super-lover/stellar-student
Gil.

McNamara’s female characters are formulaically presented using very
tired patriarchal perspectives. Vivian and Alice (from the novella)
exist because of their childlike attributes and their sexual pursuits.
In “The May Irwin-John C. Rice Kiss,” Conrad’s academic
presentation is sabotaged by ex-nun Laura, not because of her intellect,
but rather her sexual prowess. In “Midwinter,” the newly divorced
Ethan pontificates that “Life should be more than admiring the asses
of young girls.” Ethan’s not-so-gracious description goes to the
“fat Jewess who seems so proud of her figure [that she] was offering
gobs of it to the sun.” In “Dark Summer,” the three “J’s”
(Jeanne, Jessica, and Jackie) are practically indistinguishable except
that one has nicer legs than the others.

Academically speaking, McNamara’s stories have sound structural
design. Perspectives cleverly oscillate between first and third person,
male and female narrator, and storytelling and sound-bite approach. What
gets tiresome is the middle-aged, yay-I’m-an-intellectual-white-boy
voice that resonates throughout.

I suspect this kind of criticism is not new to McNamara. In his
novella, Ned, the failed poet-turned-academic, receives a review that
describes his work as “male menopausal postures of self-pity, thinly
disguised as poems.” The same could be said of this collection of
stories.