19 Knives: Stories [Paperback]

The 14 stories in 19 Knives confirm Mark Jarman's membership in an elite club of Canada's top short-fiction writers. His kinetic, high-octane prose is nothing like the more leisurely narratives of Alice Munro or Alistair MacLeod, but through its quirky compression Jarman captures the idiosyncrasies of beleaguered human minds. A typical Jarman narrative plunges the reader straight into the fiery, dense core of a consciousness made giddily intense by unexpected change. States of crisis are vividly imagined: a victim of a freak fire is compelled "to refer to myself in the third person," as "Burn Man," while he learns to inhabit his disfigured body. An army recruit reels through the brutality of 19th-century Indian wars. The punchy disenfranchisement of an unemployed man is put in perspective by two brilliantly juxtaposed incidents: his pointless fight over a parking spot at the mall and his survival of a cougar attack in the woods.

Such surprising marriages of the trivial and the sublime are a Jarman signature. He superbly exploits the surprise attack of the weird metaphor, the out-of-the-blue literary or pop-culture allusion, the sudden injection of slang into formal diction. He harnesses the combustive energy of minds tightrope-walking the line between coherence and craziness, between holding things together and succumbing to dangerous instinct. He can be hilarious, too. In a wacky story that's really an extended in-joke for culture vultures, the narrator starts seeing Margaret Atwood everywhere: she's a stewardess; she's impersonating Neil Young; she's refereeing a hockey game he plays with Don Cherry. The humour here is overt and expansive, but even the stories cranked up to the boiling point have their emotional temperature moderated by a subtly comic sensibility. With its distinctive mix of controlled polish and edgy spontaneity, 19 Knives slices up life into odd-shaped but unnervingly recognizable pieces. --John C. Ball --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Beautiful writing, too, but not too beautiful. Jarman writes the way we'd like to talk, vocabulary tripping easily to tongue, snappy comebacks at just the right moment, never too formal or too painfully colloquial. He never makes a misstep, never puts words that are too big or too small in anyone's mouth; his dialogue sounds like it was transcribed from tape rather than imagined. The verisimilitude of his writing would be unbelievable were it not here on the page waiting to be read — and read it you should, for 19 Knives is short fiction at its finest. (Georgia Straight 20050101)

Each of 19 Knives' 14 stories (all first-person narratives) integrates sparkling linguistic kinetics and honey-like narrative stickiness. Rejecting postmodern cynicism, Jarman celebrates life's ecstatic mysteries. Religious in their own way — finding meaning in music and everyday life, not empty theology — these stories shake like Muddy Waters riding a riff into the dark recesses of the night...Jarman gives us the best stuff. Solid gold. (Quill & Quire 20050101)

It is very irritating to discover a wonderful book published too long ago to be an official 'book of the year.'...Jarman's collection is...brilliant. The writing is extraordinary, the stories are gripping, it is something new. (A.S. Byatt 20050101)

Jarman's ingenuity is undeniable; his lingual dexterity is prodigious, at times downright acrobatic...The stories are engaging and some are indeed enchanting, pulling the reader into the commonplace and hypnotic. (Toronto Star 20050101)

The best of many highlights in Jarman's new collection, 19 Knives, ['Burn Man on a Texas Porch'] is not only the best I've story I've read in a year, it's probably one of the best ever written by a Canadian. It's focused, intense, colloquial and darkly funny — carefully crafted while remaining bracingly idiosyncratic...Jarman can do things with a narrative hook and a single strong character that make perennial prize-winners like Bonnie Burnard and Alistair MacLeod seem like candle-dipping dowdies. (Eye Weekly 20050101)

The frenzied pace of Mark Anthony Jarman's 19 Knives betrays the influence of the beat writers. But the dark figures who populate his devastating stories are more suggestive of David Foster Wallace...Like a quart of hand-picked berries, the stories offer sweet stabs of delight with enough grit and pesticide to set your teeth on edge. (Elm Street )

The stories grab on and then pedal on imbalance; they tilt and stay dizzyingly tilted, careering, not necessarily toward any kind of resolution, but toward the marrow of a character's psyche...Voice is the foundation and strength of 19 Knives, and provides the primal energy of the stories...19 Knives is a sinuous, heartbreaking book that probes the fragility of human identity in a fresh, elemental way. (Globe and Mail )