Consider the infamous Martian. What would they surmise about Canadians circa today, if they were to read the latest selection of Best Canadian Essays? Perhaps more apropos, what would someone a century hence learn about our national priorities? What was on our minds? Not wildfires, not war in the Middle East, not homelessness or opioid epidemics, not the mental health crisis of young people or how social media has been contributing to a post-ideological political chaos. No, upon reading this book the future might conclude that Canadians of today were mostly consumed with themselves.
The personal essay thrives in this collection, continuing its revival in this still newish century. What do we have here? Among other topics, memories and reflections upon childhood abuse, cultural assimilation, sex work, medical complications, adoption, aging, racial passing. Queries of public policy or politics are absent. Historical context is pushed so far to the side as to be hanging off the edge of the world. The role of technology in reshaping the world? Say what?
One should not, of course, criticize a book simply for being what it isn’t. But are these really the best essays of Canadians today? So much of what makes today today has been avoided. That said, what is included is quiet and lovely, intelligent and sensitive, deeply felt and articulate. The editor has selected good work, no doubt. She has chosen work of a certain kind, and readers attracted to similar preferences will be rewarded.
Did I have personal favorites? Helen Humphreys’s “The Boiler Room,” is both delicate and shocking, told with self-deprecating irony, and will give readers all the feels. Rebecca Kempe’s complicated weaving of her experience of managing the expectations of others about her racial identity, raised by a poem she’d written, is magnificent. Tom Rachman’s self-deprecating – again that trope! – story about the crushing ebb and flow of the life of a writer, “Confessions of a Literary Schlub,” framed around a trip to do a literary reading in the Cayman Islands attended by, it turned out, nobody, is a master class.
That Canadians are a quiet, reflective, articulate lot, will surprise no Martian. The future, however, might be surprised about what we missed.
Emily Urquhart is the author of three books of nonfiction including the essay collection, Ordinary Wonder Tales, a finalist for the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. She has a background in journalism and a doctorate in folklore and draws on both in her writing. She is a five-time National Magazine Award nominee for her journalistic work and has won gold and silver. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario with her husband and two children where she is a nonfiction editor for The New Quarterly and teaches creative writing and science communication at the University of Waterloo.
Publisher: Biblioasis (November 12, 2024)
Paperback 8″ x 5″ | 152 pages
ISBN: 9781771966368
Michael Bryson has been reviewing books since the 1990s in publications such as The Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Paragraph Magazine, Id Magazine, and Quill & Quire. His short story collections include Thirteen Shades of Black and White (1999) and The Lizard and Other Stories (2009). His fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories and other anthologies. His story Survival is available as a Kindle single. From 1999-2018, he oversaw 78 issues of fiction, poetry, reviews, author interviews, essays, and other features at The Danforth Review. He lives in Scarborough, Ontario, and blogs at Art/Life: Scribblings.
- Michael Brysonhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/michaelb/
- Michael Brysonhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/michaelb/
- Michael Brysonhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/michaelb/
- Michael Brysonhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/michaelb/
- Michael Brysonhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/michaelb/
- Michael Brysonhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/michaelb/
