Short stories explore tumults of youth
While the title story of Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility centres on a Kamloops- based air traffic controller’s notion of perfect flying conditions, that title’s seductive vision of the life of ideal ease, clarity and comfort — smooth sailing, in other words — pervades the entire collection.
That’s not to say any of Theodora Armstrong’s characters have been granted such good fortune. In fact, it’s often just the opposite. The hope and desire for uninterrupted stretches of leisure, easy decisions, and effortless communication is felt by everyone, but hardscrabble reality — the figurative glowering skies, gale- force winds, partial visibility of difficult days — pretty much denies that possibility, or at minimum keeps bliss just beyond reach.
In this collection ( which shares stylistic qualities with other illustrious debuts from graduates of UBC’s MFA program, especially Nancy Lee and Madeleine Thien), Armstrong reveals a fascination with the quandaries of troubled and befuddled adolescents and youngish adults who are chronically aware of the substantial divide between life- as- planned and life- as- it- turned- out.
In three intriguing variations, Armstrong sketches arresting tableaus that conjure pivotal moments of awareness and reaction for pint- sized protagonists. Set in an ugly wintry Kelowna, with a murdered neighbour and an angry, erratic, and gun- toting older brother in the foreground, Rabbit captures chilling scenes of Dawn’s moral education. Between epiphanies (“We are as dumb as birds, I guess, but our necks are too thick to snap”) and weighing loyalties, Dawn takes tentative steps toward a guarded and jaded adulthood. In Whale Stories, William copes sullenly with an abrupt move to the Sunshine Coast ( where his solitary mother runs a bed and breakfast), secretly digging a deep hole near the beach and trapping an animal. Already marked by a dreaded reputation — other boys yell “faggot” at him — 10- year- old Henry ( who lives in a village on Vancouver Island) reacts to his older brother’s taunts by deciding to become an entirely different person. In both cases, unexpected and destructive consequences suggest the boys’ real need for quality time with enlightened caregivers.
Novella- length at 86 pages, Mosquito Creek follows its narrator through about two years of Teenage Wasteland ( Grades 8 and 9, North Vancouver suburbs chapter) as she stumbles from party to party drunk and/ or high and from one sexual mess to the next. Armstrong ably conveys the reckless, chaotic, and manic energy of alienated youth, but with interminable familiar scenes of interchangeable parties and squabbles and near disasters and adolescent drama, the story itself begins to mimic the narrator’s meandering ways, and makes a reader yearn for the control and economy of the author’s shorter excursions.
The responsibilities of parenthood are closely studied in Fishtail and The Art of Eating. Taking a weekend break from a bloodless, floundering marriage in Victoria but still performing his “standard comedy routine,” Ted imagines an inspired trip with two spiteful teenage daughters to Salt Spring Island will begin to close the distance between them.
He’s wrong. Michael, a harddrinking ( and formerly hard-snorting) failing chef in an underperforming North Shore restaurant “owned by a group of has- been sports stars” faces a dark night of the soul while pondering the inevitability of the next stage of his life: Playing father to the “barnacle” that’s growing in his girlfriend’s belly. If Armstrong flirts with an overstuffed, freeflowing plot ( the story runs to 55 pages), she compensates with an enjoyably sardonic tone and a profoundly flawed and unlovable but charismatic hero whose glass- is- half- empty guided tour of the restaurant business and unrealized dreams proves wholly memorable.
Thanks to Carin and the title story carefully explore the “certain expectations” of the tax- and mortgage- paying life, the latter focused on a novice air traffic controller’s first experience with a fatal plane crash and the former about a relatively affluent ( and soon to be married) Vancouverite’s awkward visit with her carefree, still- partying sister who resides in a trailer park in Penticton. Both stories provide heartfelt commentary on the ambivalence of reaching maturity: A mate, a stable career, and a set path, sure, but at what cost?
A worthwhile, well- honed collection that’s probing and nuanced ( if not drawn to formal experiment or any material far outside the CanLit mainstream), Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility also highlights an author whose regional scope ought to be appreciated well past the borders of British Columbia.