I Know You Are But What Am I?

by Heather Birrell

'Birrell has a grand eye for the small detail that is the hallmark of a well-made story.' -- "The Toronto Star"

Kleptomaniacs, convicts, roof-walkers and homicidal populated as they are with lives both ordinary and extraordinary, Heather Birrell's stories pull at the sinews of the strange until the strangeness shapes itself into something familiar. At the same time, they mould the day-to-day into something new and wholly unexpected. Oldrick must come to terms with his ex-girlfriend's new lover and a belligerent barista in the midst of a smelly garbage strike. Young Misha learns about the complexities of grownup love when his mother is bitten by a stingray. Home-schooled Rational gets a tutor and learns that his 'hunker in the bunker' family isn't quite what he thought it was, and bus-bound Marion, in love with a married man, finds solace in conversation with a convict. The stories in "I know you are but what am I?" are like snow domes perfect little self-contained worlds that you can hold in your hand, turn upside down, shake until the meaning settles in a hundred different ways. Here are children and adults, men and women, all struggling to define themselves, all searching for ways to belong. This is a lucid, dextrous collection that marks the ascension of a writer to watch.

Heather Birrell's stories have been shortlisted for both the Western and National Magazine Awards and have appeared in numerous Canadian literary journals. A frequent book reviewer and winner of the Journey Prize, she also works as a high school teacher and a creative writing instructor.
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Genres: Short Stories

232 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 19, 2000

About the author

Heather Birrell is the author of two story collections, Mad Hope (Coach House, 2012) and I know you are but what am I? (Coach House, 2004). Her work has been honoured with the Journey Prize for short fiction and the Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction, and has been short- listed for both National and Western Magazine Awards. Birrell’s stories have appeared in many North American journals and anthologies, including The New Quarterly and Toronto Noir. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Toronto, where she teaches high school English.

Reviews

[Hanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Mad Hope so much that i really wanted to check out Heather's earlier work. This collection starts a little slow, but it definitely makes a huge crescendo towards the end. Yesterday, having read all except the very last story, i was ready to say that I liked it but i didn't love it. I was even considering only giving three stars. And then came Trouble at Pow Crash Creek, and i nearly went for all five stars.

But first, about the other 8 stories: They are good and solid, but they just don't have the same feel to them. What i liked so much in Mad hope was the poetic language, almost every sentence being a gem waiting to be read and discovered. I liked that the stories were not much of a story, but a snapshot of someone's life at a particular moment in time. Not really a beginning, a middle and an end. Just a wave of thoughts. Like you're meeting someone on the bus, they tell you their story, and you'll never see them again.

There are some stories that are already pointing towards the style Heather Birrell will develop towards Mad Hope, and not surprisingly these are the stories i liked best: 'Not Quite Casablanca', 'Your Answer Do', 'The Captain's Name Was Ned'

She had a fleeting feeling right then, of her life stretching off - not in front of her in some winding, brambly or inconveniently forked road, but instead dispersing in every possible direction into a kind of happy mist.

And then there is my absolute favorite: Trouble at Paw Crash Creek. The very last story of the book about Rational Joseph Raconteur, an extremely bright kid with way too much fantasy, looking at life through a very shiny funny window. I immediately read it twice, it was just that good.

'All right, Maura said. Where shall we sit? I stared at her. Mother too seemed shocked. What we were looking for was direction and assurance and this perky rise of question gave us neither.'

'She mostly stays in the back as Dad's not keen on her having a great deal of interaction with the general public. Or the great unwashed, as he dubbed them.'

'But I'll admit I found this difficult. To Dad, I could tell, the story was over, but part of my problem as it relates to survival is that I have a problem recognizing endings - the right point to turn away.'

Me too Rational, me too.