Smash & Grab by Mark Anthony Jarman

Reviewed by Timothy Niedermann

This latest effort by the prolific Mark Anthony Jarman is full of evidence of what has made him such an admired writer. While a couple of the stories are fairly straightforward, what characterizes most of them is what can be called “variegated depth.” What is meant by that is that Jarman does not simply lay out a story or its characters in a linear way. He adds scenes and details that stray far from his original plot line, adding nuance to the characters and their actions and motivations.

A good example of this is the first story, “The Bodies.” The narrator and his friend Bruno arrive back in their hometown after a trip to the Vancouver area to find two dead bodies on their lawn. Not anyone either knew. So they get a tractor and bury them. What they had gotten in Vancouver was some hallucinogenic drugs for the hippie commune nearby. The rest of the story concerns their interaction with townspeople and women on the commune. Finally, a sort of epilogue a number of years later looks back on those earlier years with a sense of puzzled nostalgia, speculating on what might have been happening unknown to them, and what had become of all those people since.

More straightforward is “The Cutpurse of Venice,” in which the narrator relates how he identified and kept an eye on a potential thief who was trailing him and his wife. It is a kind of reverse cat-and-mouse game, punctuated by an ultimate confrontation.

Jarman wanders to other parts of the world as well. A hit-and-run accident in Dublin stirs family memories and anxieties in “A Petrol Emotion.” In “Oh Well (Parts 1 & 2)” a group of people in a bar in the US start talking about the Vietnam War with a former soldier, from Puerto Rico, who still acts like he is in the military. The others are from Ireland, France, and Canada. There is no one from mainland US. The story’s title is taken from the Fleetwood Mac song “Oh Well,” which has been described as a cross-over from blues rock to heavy metal, and the story echoes this sense of transition from the tension of the Vietnam years to afterward.

The two-page “Northern Ontario Silver Mine” takes place in a Twin Otter float plane as it flies over the forested landscape. A female passenger has just given birth. A strangely moving story of the nurturing of life.

Other stories feature diverse characters inhabiting their own distinct situations: a lovelorn “space cowboy” on a moon base sometime in the future; a team of paramedics tries to deal with the death around them; a Canadian couple’s winter’s stay in Florence with recollections of the husband’s youthful travels at home.

Jarman takes you to places you don’t expect and turns his talented eye on the thoughts and actions of people dealing with what those places are doing to them. He is challenging, to be sure, but there is a resonance to his writing that stays with you long after the last page is turned.

Smash & Grab is published by Biblioasis.