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Collapsible by Tim Conley (New Star Books $18)
Review by Myshara Herbert-McMyn and Ginny Ratsoy (BCBW 2019)
Collapsible is unlike anything else I have ever read. As Tim Conley induces us to question the nature of reality and our perceptions, I found myself broadening my conception of what constitutes a short story.
The first sentence of the first story, “Enantiodromia or Something like It,” gave me the impression I was being introduced to the main character, but I quickly learned otherwise. This lycanthropologist (someone who studies werewolves) turns out to be the first in a series of characters leading me around in a connected spiral. The complex story cycle is complemented by the lycanthropologist’s transformation into a monster/beast.
I had to look up the definition of the titular word: Enantiodromia, a word I find beautiful to say. It means “the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development.”
This perfectly-balanced, puzzled-together story is a harbinger of things to come.
In Collapsible, Conley often has a circle of characters he moves through to forward the plot, rather than one or two main characters. These characters generally follow a connected and circular plotline as he explores philosophical questions and upturns readers’ preconceived notions in witty ways.
“Shy” is one of a handful of works that covers a page or less, and one of the strangest I have ever read. It is similar to Haiku and an Imagist poem; one simple sentence carries the weight of an entire world, an entire story. It reminds the reader of the significance of single word choice. In the context of the entire collection, it makes complete sense.
“Six Dreams of Natural Selection” blends the past and the present in six “dreams,” each one becoming stranger than the last. Although death is explored in each, interpretations are elusive. The past and present blend, and the narrative is short and episodic. Though the six vignettes seem to all be told from the point of view of the same character, only in the final dream is the character’s gender revealed. The reader must question: Is the entire world the museum exhibit of Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection?
The personification of a woman’s feet in “Her Feet” is hilarious on a literal level and at the same time terrifying. Her feet talk to each other and have very distinct personalities. As they invoke other body parts and their respective functions, and as the feet express their increasing dissatisfaction with their lowly, subservient function, an individual body becomes a metaphor for a social hierarchy, the biological body a representation of a social system. The feet in “Her Feet” contemplate job action —options of recourse that range from severing themselves from the body to demanding they be taken out dancing in an exotic locale.
“The Evil Lesbian” elicited double-takes at the abnormal and unexpected. The story puts the question “what is evil?” in the spotlight and presents the activities of the “evil lesbian” over the course of a week. Monday through Friday activities are mundane, seemingly unconnected. Perhaps apart from her returning library books on Balthus (the controversial painter of erotica, notably of young women), her weekdays are banal. The surreal twist that occurs on Saturday in the form of a cataclysm far away, causes us to question not only the titular character’s complicity, but also our own culpability as readers and actors in the “real world.”
Cumulatively, the thirty pieces in Collapsible make me want to write, to read, and to work my brain to find answers; and they also make me wonder whether or not there are answers.
These challenging stories are sometimes simple in their telling and that is their beauty. I came off the last page wanting to read the collection again to feel a little closer to understanding the meaning behind each of the stories.
Also a poet, Tim Conley teaches twentieth-century literature at Brock University, specializing in modernists such as Joyce and Beckett, as well as experimental novelists and avant-garde poets. 9781554201518
Myshara Herbert-McMyn studies creative writing and English literature at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. Ginny Ratsoy is an associate professor at Thompson Rivers University.
Review by Myshara Herbert-McMyn and Ginny Ratsoy (BCBW 2019)
Collapsible is unlike anything else I have ever read. As Tim Conley induces us to question the nature of reality and our perceptions, I found myself broadening my conception of what constitutes a short story.
The first sentence of the first story, “Enantiodromia or Something like It,” gave me the impression I was being introduced to the main character, but I quickly learned otherwise. This lycanthropologist (someone who studies werewolves) turns out to be the first in a series of characters leading me around in a connected spiral. The complex story cycle is complemented by the lycanthropologist’s transformation into a monster/beast.
I had to look up the definition of the titular word: Enantiodromia, a word I find beautiful to say. It means “the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development.”
This perfectly-balanced, puzzled-together story is a harbinger of things to come.
In Collapsible, Conley often has a circle of characters he moves through to forward the plot, rather than one or two main characters. These characters generally follow a connected and circular plotline as he explores philosophical questions and upturns readers’ preconceived notions in witty ways.
“Shy” is one of a handful of works that covers a page or less, and one of the strangest I have ever read. It is similar to Haiku and an Imagist poem; one simple sentence carries the weight of an entire world, an entire story. It reminds the reader of the significance of single word choice. In the context of the entire collection, it makes complete sense.
“Six Dreams of Natural Selection” blends the past and the present in six “dreams,” each one becoming stranger than the last. Although death is explored in each, interpretations are elusive. The past and present blend, and the narrative is short and episodic. Though the six vignettes seem to all be told from the point of view of the same character, only in the final dream is the character’s gender revealed. The reader must question: Is the entire world the museum exhibit of Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection?
The personification of a woman’s feet in “Her Feet” is hilarious on a literal level and at the same time terrifying. Her feet talk to each other and have very distinct personalities. As they invoke other body parts and their respective functions, and as the feet express their increasing dissatisfaction with their lowly, subservient function, an individual body becomes a metaphor for a social hierarchy, the biological body a representation of a social system. The feet in “Her Feet” contemplate job action —options of recourse that range from severing themselves from the body to demanding they be taken out dancing in an exotic locale.
“The Evil Lesbian” elicited double-takes at the abnormal and unexpected. The story puts the question “what is evil?” in the spotlight and presents the activities of the “evil lesbian” over the course of a week. Monday through Friday activities are mundane, seemingly unconnected. Perhaps apart from her returning library books on Balthus (the controversial painter of erotica, notably of young women), her weekdays are banal. The surreal twist that occurs on Saturday in the form of a cataclysm far away, causes us to question not only the titular character’s complicity, but also our own culpability as readers and actors in the “real world.”
Cumulatively, the thirty pieces in Collapsible make me want to write, to read, and to work my brain to find answers; and they also make me wonder whether or not there are answers.
These challenging stories are sometimes simple in their telling and that is their beauty. I came off the last page wanting to read the collection again to feel a little closer to understanding the meaning behind each of the stories.
Also a poet, Tim Conley teaches twentieth-century literature at Brock University, specializing in modernists such as Joyce and Beckett, as well as experimental novelists and avant-garde poets. 9781554201518
Myshara Herbert-McMyn studies creative writing and English literature at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. Ginny Ratsoy is an associate professor at Thompson Rivers University.
