sewn paper
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Also from Newfoundland
Other Burning Rockers
Stories; FIC 290000
September 2004
200 pages
ISBN 0-88984-253-1
$18.95
published by PQL
Making Light of Tragedy
Jessica Grant
`Making Light of Tragedy is a stunning debut from Jessica Grant, who gets my vote for most promising short story writer in Canada. The book collects 23 short stories and recalls in some respects the wonderful stories of David Arnason, though Grant's writing is much less fantastical and also more concerned with character. The stories are smart, funny, and even sweet at moments without becoming saccharine. There is also a certain degree of arrogance to the prose and on the part of the many first-person narrators. It's a welcoming, self-assured sort of arrogance, the kind that is sorely lacking in too much Canadian fiction.' `Grant's Making Light of Tragedy is a book for the eclectic coffee shop,
preferably midday when the café is busy and chances are good that you'll
bump into someone who is curious about what you are reading -- because you will want to talk
about some, if not all, of the twenty-three stories.' `Jessica Grant's stories have a habit of cutting the legs out from under you,
but they mean no harm. They just want to live under your skin for a while.
Roll around in them, play with them like a lottery winner with a bathtub
full of money.' `Jessica Grant flies under the radar of realism to find
targets worth writing about. These stories are profound, magical
and true to life. Nothing seems impossible. It's good to be
reminded of that.' An effervescent and achingly funny debut collection
from the winner of the 2004 Journey Prize.
Not many books live up to their titles
as perfectly as Making Light of Tragedy, a debut collection
of stories from Journey Prize-winner Jessica Grant. Taking the title
as a theme, these stories spin endless variations on it, peeking
into all manner of disasters and catastrophes, personal,
political, and spiritual crises, and laughing madly all the way.
Can a story be both a shrug and a prayer? Can it punch you in the arm
because, hey, it is only joking, and the next minute
fall at your feet, cling to your knees, beg you to listen?
Sure. The stories in Making Light of Tragedy are arrogant and uncertain. (This is
not a contradiction.) They make no apologies for poor taste, or the occasional
rhyme, but they do make a few demands. These include:
Let there be light. Let there be no more epigraphs. Let the ski jumper
take off. Let him never ever land. Let us cut limbs, when necessary. And
the word count too. Let this be true. Let one person speak the truth. Let
Peter Mansbridge be the ghost of Christmas future.
In this first collection by Journey Prize-winner Jessica Grant, you'll find twenty-three
bite-sized stories, with guest appearances by Holt Renfrew's daughter, Chantal Hébert,
Napoleon, the Management, the Senior Climatologist, the Dean of Humanity,
Jon Bon Jovi, Virginia Woolf and God.
`In her debut collection of stories, Jessica Grant displays a real gift
for making light of tragedy. If that doesn't sound like much of a
compliment, another way to phrase it might be making lightness from
tragedy. A native of St. John's, Newfoundland, now based in Calgary (and
a member along with Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, and others of St. John's
remarkable Burning Rock writer's collective), Grant treats the disasters
and mishaps that befall her characters not with ridicule but a wry sense
of humour and a considerable amount of sympathy. That much is clear in
"Cleave," the story that contains the title of Grant's book. One
character, who is dressed for Halloween as Virginia Woolf, explains how
two women in his office came to a meeting in the guise of "those
conjoined twins from Iran." As you might expect, the costume is deemed
to be in very poor taste. "The VP of distribution admonished the twins
for making light of tragedy," writes Grant. The character later finds
one of the women crying in the mezzanine, stroking the wigs. "But no one
understands," she tells him. "I /loved/ the conjoined twins from Iran.
The night of their operation in Singapore, I kept vigil. When they died,
a piece of me died too."' `These stories are filled with cutting, precise wit, astonishing, original imagery--I particularly love some of the seeming throwaway lines, like "The sky on the other side of the ceiling threatened rain," from "Tuan Vu"--and despite the idiosyncratic nature of many of Jessica Grant's characters, true one-to-one human connection, over and over again, in situations where connection would seem unlikely, if not impossible. She manages a wonderful, delicate balancing act--making us laugh, and enjoy, while never letting us off the hook. It's a superb work.' `The majority of these stories ... take only a few paragraphs to assume
a vivid largeness. Their worlds feel, if not always lived in, at least
concrete. Happily, the book ends on a peak with "Milaken", the longest and
most intimate story. Revolving around the rock-climbing title character
whose father named her after his favourite brand of cement, the story
highlights the greatest strengths of Grant's writing. The story is
observant, playful, and empathetic. As the characters ask themselves if they
would be willing to sever one of their arms and leave it trapped under a
boulder forever just to go on living, we glimpse the varied ways the
question echoes through their lives. Here Grant draws resonance from the
hypothetical. Her rewarding excursions into this protean realm make for a
promising debut.' `Jessica Grant's story collection opens with the Journey Prize-winning My
Husband's Jump. An Olympic ski jumper soars over a cheering crowd into a
perfect sky: up and up and ... well, up. By tale's end, he's still up,
while strained efforts to make sense of it (doping investigations, wind
theory, hoax, adultery) have long since come to naught. Meanwhile, his
narrating spouse has attained a kind of whimsical equilibrium borne on new
faith: "Lost a husband, gained a deity. What did it mean? It was like
inheriting a pet, unexpectedly. A very large Saint Bernard."
`Whimsy's appeal can easily fade. Here, Grant wields it like a veil fluttered
before the light of her gathering purpose, then eased aside for a shimmering
finale. With this opening, Grant plays her ace. In another 22 impulsive
stories, she sails blithely through shoals of thematic and structural
caprice, taking on water if never quite foundering.' `Jessica Grant is another in a line of impressive Newfoundland writers. Like Lisa
Moore and Lorrie Moore, her fictional world is ominous and sensuous. Grant's stories
possess voices that are musical, darting and yet insistent; they map odd romances with
understated language and cool-eyed wit.' `Every image detonates, every word crackles. Grant's writing is
whimsical, sophisticated, and brand spanking new. This book sizzles.
It's hot.' `When the narrator's husband takes his final Olympic ski jump, in the winning
story ``My Husband's Jump'' by Jessica Grant, he never lands. This story
suggests to us that the physical and spiritual world may be brought into
occasional and very surprising contact. The husband goes up, but never comes
down, leaving the wife to become a believer and the believers to cry foul.
This often hilarious story struck the jury as virtually flawless. We agreed
that there wasn't a word more or less than required. Jessica Grant's skilful
and playful language gave wings to the story and carried us away.' `This collection is worth the purchase price for the opening story alone:
a wife's tale of her ski-jumper husband, who takes off in Olympic competition
and just never comes down, in a scant six pages meditating touchingly
and amusingly on faith, science, the media and love. Twenty-two
more brief, compelling, smart and funny stories follow.
Their subjects range from the nature of ugliness to the lengths
one man will go to avoid shoveling snow; their wit and heart,
and Grant's abundant skill, are reminiscent of the author's fellow
Newfoundlander Lorrie Moore.' `Making Light of Tragedy is aptly titled; its stories are sharp, observant
and a great pleasure to read, and their mostly serious subject matter is thoroughly
skewered. Grant has delivered an impressive debut. This is a provocative and
engaging collection that left this writer wanting more.'
-- Jonathan Ball, Prairie Fire
-- Lisa Grekul, Event
-- Lee Shedden, The Calgary Herald
-- Michael Winter
--Jason Anderson, amazon.ca
-- Glenn Raucher, amazon.com
-- Stewart Cole, Quill & Quire
-- Jim Bartley, the Globe and Mail
-- Mark Anthony Jarman
-- Lisa Moore
-- Jury's comments, the 2004 Journey Prize
-- The Ruminator, St Paul MN
-- Nancy Jo Cullen, Alberta Views
