Newfoundland’s unforgiving world
Debut novel’s trendy setting contrasts its dark themes
Newfoundlander Megan Gail Coles dedicates “Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club” to “the beautiful vicious island that makes and unmakes us.” She favours “vicious” over “beautiful” about 20:1.
No one, save for the categorically perverse or sociopathic, will finish the 400-plus pages of the dramatist and poet’s splenetic first novel and conclude, “I’ve really got to add St. John’s to my bucket list itinerary.”
Of course as a novelist she’s less interested in the sights (wintry) than the populace (unsavoury, suffering). And Coles’ view of the human animal — and the white heterosexual male human, in particular — is far from a showcase of sweetness and light.
Born or bred as a noxious brew of traits, Coles’ catalogue of local “man-child” dudes — the adulterous rogue who believes charm excuses all of his countless moral misdemeanours; the homophobic codger who’s a walking embodiment of unchecked privilege; the dead-eyed addict who orchestrates a hotel room gang rape — are repellent.
And, for the novel, they’re typical. The first impulse of these guys is to take what they want and not ask questions later. It goes without saying, then, that for Coles’ trampled on “small game” women, compromise, victimhood and constant wariness are the status quo.
Coles’ structure belies the novel’s cavernous darkness. Set at The Hazel, a trendy overpriced restaurant, on a sub-zero blizzard over one Valentine’s Day, the story’s three parts, “Prep,” “Lunch,” and “Dinner,” hint at farcical comedy, with types — a sexy bartender, a hungover waiter, a suave restaurateur — either crossing paths or at cross-purposes. There are service mishaps, kitchen glitches, near misses, and an ill-timed blackout.
Eventually, there’s yelling too. And violence. These developments reveal the substance of the novel.
While a-day-in-the-life-of-arestaurant provides the tale’s surface, the various (pain-filled, miserable, lonesome, mistakestrewn, awful, self-destructive) histories of The Hazel’s staff and customers (and those in their orbit) supply the harrowing context.
Though the novelist occasionally indulges her characters’ habit of “pitiful replay” — recalling episodes of weepy, raging, or drunken of accusatory cellphone texting, for instance — she does conjure a remarkably hard and unforgiving world, where appetite along with an imbalance of power and outlooks create heartache, chronic pain and fleeting escapes. “Life is hardly worth living,” one of Coles’ character decides. Based on “Small Game Hunting,” readers will be inclined to agree.
Brett Josef Grubisic’s latest novel is Oldness; Or, the Last-Ditch Efforts of Marcus O.