We Could Stay Here All Night

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

These stories examine the inner workings of one family, with each story
depicting a different stage in the main character’s life. We watch as
the child Diane blooms into adolescence and then adulthood. The
collection explores the theme of growing into one’s parents’
patterns.

Howlett matches the narrative voice with Diane’s age. Consequently,
the early stories have an immature quality to them, and lack detail and
depth. For example, “How Do I Look” has a scene with the family
(Mom, Dad, brother, brother’s friend, and Diane) in the car. It
isn’t until Grannie “pipes up” that her presence becomes known.
The omission of this periphery detail left me feeling I was reading
blind, or at least with severely limited tunnel vision.

I also had difficulty visualizing some scenes. For instance, no matter
how often I reread the train scene in “The Comfort Zone,” I was
unable to visualize exactly what was happening. Was the car stuck on the
track? What could frighten a child and her father so? “A train was
rolling toward us down the centre of the bridge, and the car began to
sway slightly from side to side with the motion of it. I tightened my
grip on the dash. Dad kept both hands on the wheel to steady the car,
and my nerves, and stared straight ahead.” Then, the narrative snaps
to: “When we got there ...” Huh? The moment of supposed incredible
tension has vanished into sudden nothingness.

As the main character matures, so do the stories and their narrative.
They lose the simplistic child’s perspective, are written with more
clarity and detail, and become more interesting. “Mount of Venus”
nicely contrasts Diane’s father now with her impression of him in
earlier stories, and “Vermont” shows the distance Diane has
traveled, both literally (she and Steven are traveling through
Vancouver) and metaphorically (Diane becomes a shadow of her mother).

Read individually, the earlier stories are simplistic and lack
meaningful detail. When held up in contrast to the later stories, they
provide some context and a bit of depth. Howlett undertakes a monumental
task in using short stories to frame a life, but falls short in offering
the layers of depth that such a construct is capable of creating.