Collection nails mood of our times
In Dina Del Bucchia’s standout short story collection, Don’t Tell Me What To Do, we encounter Kittany, a Millennial model-turned-socialmedia-star and leader of a cult called The Light. In between vapid Instagram posts — artfully-lit naked photos captioned with inspirational sentiments — Kittany rules her rural commune in a $195 T-shirt, pores over her Vice and Vanity Fair coverage, ignores emails from her feminist mother and solicits sexual favours from male “devotees” with man-buns. Or else leads workshops on making quilts from old clothes.
Anyone who spends time on the internet will find echoes here to numerous online communities: the DIY enthusiasts, the back-to-the-landers, the hashtag activists and the New Age yogis. The Instagram poets, the savvy van-dwellers selling an illusion of adventure, Gwyneth Paltrow and her legions of health-conscious Goop followers. The amorphous, shifting world of 21st Century sexuality. The voracious appetite of the 24-hour news cycle. And, of course, the ongoing project we’re all engaged in of producing, packaging and documenting our lives.
To her credit, Del Bucchia takes this ubiquitous raw material and moulds it into something fresh and new. Indeed, “The Gospel of Kittany” is entirely original. A pitch-perfect story that nails the mood of our current times.
Del Bucchia is a Vancouver poet known for her wit, flair and cultural commentary.
She’s published three volumes of poetry, Coping With Emotions and Otters, Blind Items, and Rom Com, with her fellow Can’t Lit podcast host Daniel Zomparelli. These early works introduced a writer with tremendous potential — a promise Don’t Tell Me What To Do makes good on.
This fiction debut is jam-packed with unusual female figures — rebellious, morally dubious women trying to make sense of the world. There’s a people-pleasing crafter obsessed with giving thoughtful gifts to coworkers, desperate to fill the void of 21st Century corporate life with colour-co-ordinated balloons and appliquéd potted plants. There’s a retiree fixated on paving her lawn and pissing off her neighbours; a young alcoholic who steals thousands in toonies from a middle-aged fling and heads off on a shopping spree; a 22year-old Gap employee whose neat, tidy mall romance ends in tragedy.
These are evocative, memorable characters. Captivating stories, with tight, polished writing. All told in a shockingly unique voice. After putting down the book, readers might find themselves searching the website of the New Yorker, looking for more of Del Bucchia’s stories. It’s only a matter of time until we find them there. Tara Henley is a writer and radio producer.