Home
What Men Know About Women (Oolichan $15.95)
In John Grisham novels and video games, men are still supposed to be heroes saving damsels from distress. In movies they save planets and galaxies. By contrast, a man who tries to save his soul by pursuing inner truths is anti-heroic. Male narrators in Ron Smith's What Men Know About Women (Oolichan $15.95), for example, mostly share awkward insights that we assume are autobiographical in origin, exposing and exploring the fragility of their egos. They do so in a style akin to talking to themselves, making us privy to their most private thoughts. "Hold me,"; confides one narrator. "I am not ready to be old."; His wife's affection terrifies him. "I'm in love with a woman with whom I can't speak,"; he tells us.
One wonders if the storyteller is more capable of being honest with readers than with people around him. Smith exposes a myriad of conscientious conflicts that are universal struggles for compromise. Put simply, it is difficult to behave decently and to be scrupulously honest.
With several references to Richard Ford's fiction, Smith's title story recalls a man's journey to his daughter's soccer tournament in the Twin Cities. His wife has flown ahead with his daughter while he drives to Minneapolis with their younger son. They are accompanied by another man, Gus, who has a crude but relatively conventional view of sexuality. Hoping to get closer to his 11-year-old son, the father/narrator closely monitors the fluctuating dynamics of his family life and the mysteries of gender differences. He and his wife share an unexpectedly gratifying close encounter in a motel room; later Gus tells a ribald joke in a cafe. "I have a tendency to put a reverse spin on events,"; he says, "to see life darker than it is."; But by recalling hundreds of details from this fractured family adventure, the narrator celebrates the fascinating, irritating and unending complexity of so-called normality. The light at the end of the introspective tunnel is this man's marital relationship. The title story ends with the narrator next to his partner in bed, unable to sleep, inarticulate but deeply grateful and respectful. "The point is, I don't know why most people, let alone women, do what they do,"; he confides. "This is something I'd like to talk over with Jean. Instead I lie there in the dark and try to harmonize my breathing with hers.";
These stories are not urbane advertisements for the writer's cleverness. They are private reflections, mature and intimate, from a man who struggles to be a decent father and husband. As such, they are essentially moralistic explorations, critical-minded but not cynical, beyond the realm of biscotti literati. Ron Smith is concerned with personal truth for the sake of redemption; it's a safe bet he won't achieve flavour of the week status. 0-88982-177-1
[Alan Twigg / BCBW SUMMER 1999]
One wonders if the storyteller is more capable of being honest with readers than with people around him. Smith exposes a myriad of conscientious conflicts that are universal struggles for compromise. Put simply, it is difficult to behave decently and to be scrupulously honest.
With several references to Richard Ford's fiction, Smith's title story recalls a man's journey to his daughter's soccer tournament in the Twin Cities. His wife has flown ahead with his daughter while he drives to Minneapolis with their younger son. They are accompanied by another man, Gus, who has a crude but relatively conventional view of sexuality. Hoping to get closer to his 11-year-old son, the father/narrator closely monitors the fluctuating dynamics of his family life and the mysteries of gender differences. He and his wife share an unexpectedly gratifying close encounter in a motel room; later Gus tells a ribald joke in a cafe. "I have a tendency to put a reverse spin on events,"; he says, "to see life darker than it is."; But by recalling hundreds of details from this fractured family adventure, the narrator celebrates the fascinating, irritating and unending complexity of so-called normality. The light at the end of the introspective tunnel is this man's marital relationship. The title story ends with the narrator next to his partner in bed, unable to sleep, inarticulate but deeply grateful and respectful. "The point is, I don't know why most people, let alone women, do what they do,"; he confides. "This is something I'd like to talk over with Jean. Instead I lie there in the dark and try to harmonize my breathing with hers.";
These stories are not urbane advertisements for the writer's cleverness. They are private reflections, mature and intimate, from a man who struggles to be a decent father and husband. As such, they are essentially moralistic explorations, critical-minded but not cynical, beyond the realm of biscotti literati. Ron Smith is concerned with personal truth for the sake of redemption; it's a safe bet he won't achieve flavour of the week status. 0-88982-177-1
[Alan Twigg / BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Submitted on July 9, 2003 in By David.
