Reviewed by Jerry Levy
Nicola Winstanley is the author of the delightfully-named children’s books How to Give Your Cat a Bat: In Five Easy Steps, The Pirate’s Bed, and Cinnamon Baby. Smoke is her first foray into the more adult literary genre. Although eminent authors, such as Leo Tolstoy, Mary Shelly, Oscar Wilde, and Gabriel García Márquez, wrote stories for children as well as adults, it’s not always an easy transition from depicting the wondrous and immense possibilities inherent in children’s lives to the disarray and disillusionment, the humdrum, we often see depicted in adult literary lives. Reading the varied stories in Smoke, one can say with conviction that Winstanley has made the transition seamlessly, offering valuable insights into humanity and life.
The Czech-German writer Franz Kafka once said, “that books must be the axe to break the frozen sea within us.” Perhaps the reason Smoke works so well is exactly that because the stories break our internal complacency; they will stay with the reader for a long time, roiling up internal peace. For instance, and without giving any of the plot away, reading Chicken and It Means“Beloved,” truly disturbs us; moreover, and much to our chagrin, there is no help forthcoming for the aggrieved characters in the stories. This writer, for one, will not look at a piece of chicken the same way for a very long time. And I will give my beloved cat extra-long hugs and pets.
There’s no way out. In the story Chicken, that’s precisely what Fiona thinks when she is forced into a dead-end job in a chicken factory. That appears to be the fate of many of the characters in Smoke, eleven linked-short stories that effortlessly transition between Canada and New Zealand and which focus on the effects of intergenerational shocks (both emotional and physical) foisted upon them. It is as if they are all walking through life at the hands of fate, carrying heavy burdens. And those burdens will invariably morph into crises of identity, as evidenced by Amanda in Amanda’s Baptism, when she thinks about her father Ernie: It was easy for Amanda to lie to Ernie because he didn’t know she was. But then, she didn’t really know who she was either.\
And although it is very certain that author Winstanley had not meant to suggest this, the collection is a testament as to why some people might not consider having children: through no fault of their own, with no viable role models, the young folk grow up too quickly, mired in grief and disappointment and dysfunction, and lose any dreams they might have had (if they ever had them to begin with). We see them eating toast for dinner and biscuits for breakfast, hiding fudge from family members so they can gobble the meagre portions up later, when no one is around. They are often left alone for long periods of time, trying to fend for themselves. We witness young women desperately trying to ward off boys’ sexual advances and we read about how these young people seek to latch on to something, anything, that will offer them some peace and a sense of meaning, a soft landing, such as the bible-toting Mormons and their doublespeak in Amanda’s Baptism. In quiet desperation, we read the heart-break that befalls a young boy when a dog he loves, for no real reason at all, is shot dead by an adult. The lessons they all learn at a young age is that life is hard, and will only get harder. No cinnamon lollipops and rainbows here. As that lunatic Vic in ‘It Means “Beloved,”’ yells out: “There’s nothing you can do! Nothing! Nothing!” We feel for them, they break our hearts, the children do, but as Fiona thinks, there really is no way out.
Actually, some of the characters in Smoke remind one of those we encountered in Heather O’Neill’s Lullabies for Little Criminals. Low-lives like Alphonse, the pimp, and Jules, Baby’s heroin-addicted father. We see similar people in Winstanley’s collection, broken adults who have no true coping skills, and who are emotionally immature. When life gets rough and wears them down, as invariably it will, they lash out at others. Or they drink to excess. That is not to say that all is doom and gloom in the collection: there are often patches of necessary humour, such as when the grossly-oversized woman knocked over an entire rack of shoes in Rubber. A scene straight out of Laurel & Hardy.
Exceptionally well-done are descriptions. Here’s an example, also from Rubber: “The woman’s in slippers, a kitten-and-glitter-covered T-shirt with no bra, by the looks of it, and a pair of burgundy sweatpants – everything plus-plus-sized, but still a size too small. A roll of fat, smooth and pink as luncheon meat, billows from underneath the hem of her skirt.” Yikes!
Dialogue is equally well-done, with characters occasionally switching the subject abruptly to a non-sequitur, a random response unrelated to the previous question. Here’s an example between Gabby and Clare, in Everything Happens for a Reason:
“You’ve just started at intermediate school, haven’t you?” Gabby turned again and bounced up and down a little in her seat. “I wish I was still in school. We would have been friends, don’t you think?”
“Look.” Clare pointed to a concrete veranda where a shirtless, fat old man, pale and bulbous as a lump of lard, fanned himself with a folded newspaper. “Is he your type?”
Clearly, Clare doesn’t want to engage with Gabby in any meaningful dialogue. She makes it hard for her. Here’s one further example, an exchange between Fiona and John, this one from Chicken:
“What are you going to do once you finish school?” John says.
“When I grow up? Let’s see. I’m thinking of becoming an astronaut. Or maybe I’ll lecture in experimental physics somewhere in the States. Or, I’ll go the artistic route, sculpture, or art film. Maybe I’ll just travel around Europe, you know, taking photos.”
“I can get you a job at the plant,” John says, serious now. Indeed, he can. But what about what Fiona said (even if it might have been uttered entirely to provoke)?
There are many similar instances throughout Smoke where characters are looking for information from someone and the latter prefers not to give it, simply switching the subject. A technique, that, if used properly, increases tension. For certain, Winstanley doesn’t always make it easy on her characters!
If there was one issue with a couple of the stories, it would be that the endings appear a bit cryptic. Stories like Feeling in the Flesh, Keys, a few others, are potentially open to different interpretations as regard to those endings. While there are many ways to conclude a story, including using ambiguous endings, resolved/unresolved endings, endings that tie a nice bow on things, and so on…generally speaking, a well-crafted resolution is often key to leaving readership satisfied, leaving them remembering the work a bit more and providing a sense of closure. The open-ended resolutions in a few stories of Winstanley’s collection seem to favour the characters’ solitary, isolating emotions. They are almost more internally-inspired poetry than prose. Still in all, there are no hard and fast rules in storytelling, only perhaps guiding principles, (such as wrapping up stories with a neat little bow). The endings the author has chosen still work fine, simply providing the reader with more latitude to consider/interpret.
Overall, Smoke is a lovely yet powerful collection of inter-linked stories that hooks the readers from the get-go. Winstanley takes us on an honest and exhilarating journey through the lives of dysfunctional people, those looking for connection, identity, and a means to feel less invisible. A highly-recommended first collection.
Smoke is published by Wolsak & Wynn.
Jerry Levy’s third collection of short stories, The Philosopher Stories, will be published in 2024 by Guernica Editions. He will be teaching a short story writing course in the spring/summer of 2024 at The Life Institute, affiliated with Metropolitan University.