Robert Gray has crafted an exceptional anthology in "Crisp", a
collection whose stories strike a balance between tightly focused
slice-of-life tales and more complex narratives pushing into a
magical-realist fabulism anchored in the grey skies and deadly
ennui of the working-class Canadian west. In some of the other
reviews of the book that i've read, people have expressed a
preference for one side of that narrative balance or the
other - but for me, the point of the book was the
juxtaposition between those two forms, both of which Gray handles
with an infuriating verbal dexterity.
It's always too easy (and often dangerously pedantic) to make
arbitrary comparisons from one author to another. But as i was
reading "Crisp", i was pleasantly overwhelmed by how much the book
felt like some of my own favorite writers. Gray captures the poetic
qualities in Michael Ondaatje, the sense of disturbed wonder in
Jorge Luis Borges, the grating edge of the flipping-god-the-finger
rage in Harlan Ellison - but not in the sense that "Crisp"
simply apes the style of those or any other writers, because Gray's
voice is wholly original in these pages. Rather, "Crisp" displays
the remarkable talent for turning the mundane world inside out in
the same way those writers have always done for me - creating
stories that are poetic, enigmatic, and searingly memorable all at
once.
My two favorite pieces in the collection are the title story -
a stunning magic-realist reflection on innocence, loss, and the way
that parents inevitably fail to armor their children to face the
world for themselves; and my favorite story, "Thirst" - a
manifold personal, environmental, and psychosexual apocalypse tale
told (as is "Crisp") from the perspective of the dying days of
childhood. Both stories manage to be terrifying, heartbreaking, and
life-affirming at the same time, and though i accept that
everyone's taste is different, i can't think of any higher praise
for fiction.
The only story that i felt the collection could have done without
was "Sweet Tooth" - not because it's a poor tale (it's
actually a very poignant, darkly funny episode of domestic strife,
loss, and emotional ambition), but because of all the stories in
the collection, it felt more confessional than evocative. Gray's
ability to weave the evocation of emotion into his stories is
formidable, and i am so looking forward to his next works.