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Oscar Martens of Burnaby started publishing his stories in literary journals at age 17, leading this first collection of fiction, The Girl with the Full Figure Is Your Daughter (Turnstone 2002). One of his stories was selected for the 2008 Journey Prize Stories 20 anthology. In 2000 he participated in the St. Roch Voyage of Rediscovery through the Northwest Passage, followed by a year working on coastal tugboats. He has lived in Winnipeg, Victoria, Ottawa, Kenya and New Zealand. He second collection is No Call Too Small (Central Avenue Publishing 2020) $14.99 978-1-77168
BOOKS:
The Girl with the Full Figure is Your Daughter (Turnstone 2002) $16.95 978-0888012722
No Call Too Small (Central Avenue Publishing 2020) $14.99 978-1-77168
[BCBW 2020]
Articles: 1 Article for this author
The Girl with the Full Figure is Your Daughter (Turnstone $16.95)
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There is no indication on the cover of Oscar Martens' The Girl with the Full Figure is Your Daughter (Turnstone $16.95) that his stories reveal sordid and sadistic tendencies. Planes crash. Corporate secrets are stolen. A young girl is murdered.
In Leila's Suburban Grass, a cynical investor searches for meaning. "Without grass, without earth contact, there is no point of reference to balance out abstraction. I have $472,000 and every day I try to decide if that makes me rich."
She evaluates the men she dates, using a concise format for each review-including 'Distinguishing Marks' and 'Preferred Position.' She finally settles on Andrew, who is afraid of grass stains, yet understands her barefoot urges.
"When we played [lawn darts] as kids sometimes one of us would throw the dart straight up by accident and no one could see where it went because of the sun and everyone would scream and cover their heads and wait for that dart to come down, wait forever under the hot sun."
Oscar Martens lives in Burnaby.
