With a title like Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, I’m not even sure I need to review this one. Isn’t it marvellous? Jacob Wren writes, before the table of contents, that it’s an adaptation of a similar line from a poem by the Nicaraguan poet Daisy Zamora, “The News Vendor.” It’s certainly an incredible title, and after having read the novel, I can imagine no other that perfectly captures the conflicted, probing text of Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim.
A writer heads to an unnamed country under the guise of visiting a friend there. The country is currently undergoing war, and the writer feels some sort of responsibility to go see what his tax dollars have wrought. After departing his friend’s house, despite knowing she will protest, the writer makes his way across the country, travelling through the war zone, observing the cost, and then stumbling into the hands of a strange group: a feminist collective, controlling their own land, and seeking to carve out democracy in the middle of the warfare. The writer finds himself joining the community, and trying to work through the pain and shakiness the war has brought upon him, as well trying to figure out the most ethical way to get the story of the collective out into the world, so that they may be known and supported.
This is a deeply moving, challenging novel, and certainly very prescient. What is our obligation to others, particularly those in war-torn countries? How are we implicated through the tangled threads of history? Wren has written an anti-war novel, but it’s far more nuanced and unclear than I think we’d like to believe that the position of anti-war is. The writer acknowledges his foolishness throughout the text, addressing the reader directly, and noting that his actions are confounding, his assistance to the resistance nigh useless – and yet he is there. He has a record of the slice of collective land, and is responsible for getting it out into the world; a task, he realizes comes with even simple challenges, like what language to write it in. How does he do the collective service in this way, properly?
This is a deeply moving, challenging novel, and certainly very prescient. What is our obligation to others, particularly those in war-torn countries? How are we implicated through the tangled threads of history? Wren has written an anti-war novel, but it’s far more nuanced and unclear than I think we’d like to believe that the position of anti-war is. … A perfectly positioned novel for the current historical moment.
Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is a perfectly positioned novel for the current historical moment. I only hope that we can all read it and grapple, together.
JACOB WREN makes literature, performances, and exhibitions. His books include Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed; Polyamorous Love Song (finalist for the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2014); Rich and Poor (finalist for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a Globe and Mail best book of 2016); and Authenticity is a Feeling. He is artistic co-director of the Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART. Wren lives in Montreal.
Publisher: Book*hug Press (September 17, 2024)
Paperback 5.25″ x 8″ | 220 pages
ISBN: 9781771669047
Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
