The Night Piece by André Alexis
2020, Penguin Random House, 384 pages, $34.95
Collection of Short Fiction, Literary Fantasy
This is a collection of short fiction, ranging from a few paragraphs (the chapters titled “Ottawa”, to the last major story “A” which left me wondering as to the line between short story and novella. Most of the stories take place in Ottawa, some in Toronto, and a handful in Europe. Most of the stories could be placed into the literary fantasy genre, but that genre has some wide overlap with magical realism, and it’s hard to put a book of different stories into a single category. It’s also hard to give a rating to, as some of the stories were great, and some were… not.
Of the stories, my favorites were “Letters (on a Book Lately Circulating in the Offices of Transport Canada)”, and “Mylène Saint-Brieuc”. These stories were well-paced, and full stories in their own rights with distinct characters. This is tricky because most of the stories in this book are written in the first-person, and with that style, it’s not uncommon for the narrator to be a substitute for the author, whose voice echoes with new names, times, and scenarios, but here that wasn’t the case. These stories were not repetitive stories, with repetitive wording and characterisations. They show off the writer’s ability to create a narrative diversity made the read worth my time.
The weaknesses of the book were that some of the stories were not really stories. They were samples of writing, as if the overqualified author were applying for content-creator job at website specialising in dark fantasy. That’s what made it hard to choose a rating for this book, is that some of the stories aren’t as good as some of the others, and some barely qualify as stories, but are instead more of a scenario presentation for a later and more serious attempt at a story line.
All-in-all, I’m glad that I read this book, though it wasn’t as impressive as “Fifteen Dogs” which is what originally brought the author to my attention. Without the filler, this would be a four or four-and-a-half out of five, but the book was pasted together with some stories that should have either been shelved or further developed.
★★★☆☆
