Once You Break a Knuckle

by D.W. Wilson

  Set in the remote Kootenay Valley in western Canada, Once You Break a Knuckle tells stories of good people doing bad two bullied adolescents sabotage a rope swing, resulting in another boy’s death; a heartbroken young man refuses to warn his best friend about an approaching car; sons challenge fathers and break taboos. Crackling with tension and propelled by jagged, cutting dialogue, the stories interconnect and reveal to us how our best intentions are doomed to fail or injure, how our loves can fall short or mislead us, how even friendship–especially friendship–can be something dangerously temporary. Wilson’s world is always dangerous, barbed with violence and the possibility of betrayal. And yet, in this small, finely-wrought universe, a dogged, wry dignity is usually enough to see us through. An intoxicating alloy of adrenaline and the kind of vulnerability we would all admit to if we were honest, Once You Break a Knuckle is about the courage it takes just to make it through the day.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Canada

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

I am the author of two books, Ballistics and Once You Break a Knuckle, as well as a host of other separately published stories and essays, some of which have won prizes like BBC Short Story Award, the CBC Canada Writes Story Prize, and the Manchester Fiction Prize. That's the bones of my bio, same one you'll find on other websites or in the sleeves of my two books.

I love books but I also love nerd stuff. I'm happy to dump dozens of hours into video game in a single sitting and I get unacceptably excited waiting for the latest superhero flick to start. I once put 600 hours into building a fibreglass Iron Man suit for my wife for Halloween (it had light-up eyes) which she danced to the end of love late into the night. I think of this as an outlet for unspent or untapped creative energy; I spend so much time at a desk, in front of a screen, that it is sometimes nice to work with my hands, even if I'm working on soldering an LED into a replica arc reactor.

I grew up in the Kootenays and some part of the small town boy remains. I can chop lumber if under duress. I wish I owned a truck.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”It always seems like everything’s the same until the moment when you need everything to be the same. Then you find out it’s been different the whole time.” From the story The Persistence.

I’m really surprised to discover that someone growing up in Invermere, BC could have a similar experience to a kid growing up in Glade, Kansas. Small towns, it seems are similar everywhere. I can’t tell you how irritated I was when Sarah Palin was going around the country talking about Small Town Values. It made me want to upchuck. I had lived in some major cities by then, Tucson, Phoenix, San Francisco, and had spent time in most of the major cities in the United States. One thing I’ve discovered is that people are people and what good people value are pretty much the same things good people value everywhere. Big city people can be just as friendly if not more so than small town people who generally, frankly, are hindered by inbred discriminations against anyone they didn’t grow up with. Nothing personal, you're just not from around here. If you listen to Sarah Palin small towns are the paragons of virtue, but what I’ve discovered is that adultery, fornication of all kinds( yes what you are thinking), too much drinking, drugs, and true evil are as prevalent in small towns as in big cities.

Now D. W. Wilson embraces all of that, but what is endearing about his characters are they are fundamentally good people struggling with life. I grew up with a bunch of guys that hung together because of bisecting interests. I’d say that we were a little more intelligent than the average teenager. We dated the same pack of girls and took similar classes. We went out for sports. We became officers in FFA, muscling out the upperclassmen our sophomore year to take control of the direction of chapter. We supported one of our members to be class president our senior year. Ultimately we were held up by one thing:

”We were never the kids who ran the town--it never felt like ours, probably because none of us ever intended to stay.” From the story Once You Break a Knuckle.

Every relationship we had was temporary because we weren’t staying. It was like a mantra we would keep reminded each other of.

”Small town girls, Twigg might mumble into his pint. They come into your life and then they’re gone and you’ve forgotten them just as quick. You know how it is. You know how it is.” From the story Accelerant.

But there is always that one girl that for a moment you think about throwing all your dreams and your expectations for yourself out the window of a fast moving Chevy.

”She sucked the rest of the whiskey and pointed at the sky where a trail of turquoise streaked across the horizon--the northern lights, earlier than I’d ever known them. She just stood there for a second with her back to me and those light around her. Christ, she was so pretty. Then she whipped the empty bottle off the summit, and I stared at her and thought about her and waited for the sound of the bottle breaking way, way below us.” From the story The Dead Roads.

Then you wake up and realize you might as well just drown yourself in the nearest rusty cattle tank.

There are a lot about fathers and sons in this collection. There is conflict and love and fear.

”He wanted to grab his dad’s hair and smash that face into a tabletop, until the wood was dented with his dad’s front teeth and all that remained in his fist was a bloody husk of hair and sinew.” From the story Valley Echo.

I never felt that much anger at my Dad. I only made him really mad one time. I was disking a field and these two young ladies I knew tracked me down and asked me if I could go to the lake with them. An hour no more... which ended up being closer to three. When they dropped me back at the field my Dad was driving the tractor. I waited at the edge of the field until he made a circle and pulled up in a cloud of dust or it could have been a cloud of my shame. He stepped out of the tractor and pushed me. I hit him in the chest, which turned out to be one of his least vulnerable spots. I nearly broke my thumb. It was black and blue for several days and sore for weeks. He pushed me again towards the road and got back in the tractor and drove off. I walked about five miles home. We never spoke about it again.

”I imagined my old man behind me, on the slope with arms crossed, dwindling to an outline, a silhouette, a shadow.” From the story Reception.

My grandfather died from a massive heart attack at 45. My father found him, black tongue extended. He’d been throwing some feed into the horse bunks when his heart seized. My father was 14. It just so happened that when I turned 14 my father was 45. He didn’t talk about it with me, but the house was small and I heard his conversations with life insurance agents. That same year I remember my mom waking me up at 2AM and asking me to go look for my father. My heart was in my throat as I started the pickup letting the engine warm up. It was hard for me to conceive that anything could happen to my Dad that he didn’t want to have happen. I drove around through all the pastures thinking he had been restless and had decided to check cattle. It was spooky being out that time of the night, black as pitch. The cattle’s eyes glowed from the light of my high beams. Shadows looked menacing. My mind began to imagine the absolute worst possibilities. I finally came home without finding him. I was worried about what my mom would say regarding my failure. Luckily he was back, healthy, angry at mom, but he chucked my chin and ruffled my hair and told me to get back to bed.

Wilson talks about sons. The struggles they have to find themselves, respect their fathers, and at the same time make them proud of them. Yes, I was one of those guys with tears welling when Kevin Costner asked his Dad if he wanted to have a catch.

”Together we’ve raised our sons to be someone into whose care you could entrust a belonging.” From the story The Mathematics of Friedrich Gauss.

This line made me gasp because it encapsulated the way I feel about my son. He is loyal, warm, considerate, and strong. He will be a rock for the woman lucky enough to win his love.

My London Bookseller recommended this to me along with D. W. Wilson’s first novel Ballistics. I got to say Nick came through for me again. I loved the way these stories weave around each other with characters starring in one story and appearing as a sidekick in the next. Wilson explores all facets of this community of people. He shows how hard life is and how difficult it is to be happy. He shows how destructive people are, not intentionally, but breaking dreams of other people in the process of trying to figure out their own lives.

Obviously this book clicked over a lot of memories for me. It made me think about things I haven’t thought about for years. His short story The Dead Roads won the 2011 BBC Short Story Award and it was certainly one of my favorites, but the rest of the collection had the same muscular confidence as the one that won the award. I’m definitely going to read his novel and see what he can do with a longer arc of plotting. ”Promotions, he told me, are a lot like blowjobs: easy to get if you’re willing to go somewhere dirty.” From the story The Elasticity of Bone. So get a little dirty with D. W. Wilson. You might get beer spilled on your lap or grease on your clothes or dirt on your skin, but in the process you might appreciate who you have and what you have just a little bit more.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled onto this collection of stories and was blown away by it. It is difficult not to just pour out superlatives about each story. I'm not going too because another reviewer, Jeffrey Keeton, has done it far better then I. For a much longer more comprehensive review read his.

As a brief summary, or encouragement, I will say that the stories are linked by the same characters at different ages and at different moments of experience and maturity. There are very powerful and moving stories and episodes about fathers and sons, and also about men growing up, growing older, maturing - or not as the case may be - and all powerful and moving. I haven't been so pleased with discovering a writer in a long time.

All these stories are set in small towns and it is a constant throughout all them that small towns (like the countryside, the suburbs any place that is not urban and is supposed to be the ideal places for families to grow up in) have failed to be anything but places to escape from. Places were bulling and savagery are the norm. Considering how often we hear that cities have failed it is amazing how rarely it is admitted the sylvan alternative is invariably worse.

To summarise - loved the book - read it - even if you end up not liking it you will not have wasted your time.

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A punchy collection of intertwined short stories about boys, men, and what it means to be either one.

As with any collection, a select few will shine above the rest, but all of these stories are worth merit.
Wilson writes with dirt and spit and squinted eyes, nothing is smooth or majestic, and that serves the overall vibe well.

Pretty good read,
Would probably pick up more D. W. Wilson if I saw one knocking about.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some months ago I bought three used books of short stories online. I must try to recreate that moment since these books are proving to be a most strange, kooky and weird combination of books. What was I thinking? It turned out that they were all, unbeknownst to me, ex-library books, something I generally avoid. It is feeling like a meant-to-be serendipity.

You will not be surprised when I tell you that Once You Break a Knuckle is a bit of a macho book. It is about guys who are, or who imagine themselves to be, rough and ready. Guys who drink beer and drive trucks. The stories are set in the environs of Invermere.

Invermere is a community in eastern British Columbia, Canada, near the border of Alberta. With its growing permanent population of almost 4,000 (including Athalmer and Wilmer), swelling to near 40,000 on summer weekends, it is the hub of the Columbia Valley between Golden in the north, and Cranbrook to the south. Invermere sits on the northwest shore of Lake Windermere and is a popular summer destination for visitors and second home owners from Calgary.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invermer...

You might think, like I often do, that Canada is simply a northern extension of the U.S. You and I would be wrong. Canada is someplace else. D.W. Wilson is from Canada and writes in the Canadian language. It takes some adjusting for us southerners – and we are all southerners to Canadians. For example, befitting my view of the book as macho, I was still impressed when cars traveled at one hundred. It took me a while to figure out it is kilometers per hour in Canada. It is good to know a little bit about hockey as well.

This was a fun book to read in moderation. I do not need to read another one like it anytime soon. The author has a way with words, a sometimes clever way. He can be humorous to the point of being occasionally ribald or self-depreciating. Based on the reviews in Goodreads I would say that many of the readers are from the Invermere part of the world. In fact, my ex-library book came from the Vancouver Island Regional Library. And, for a somewhat macho book, it surprised me how many of the GR reviewers were women. In fact, I’d say I was stunned by the femaleness of the readership. Must say something about being a Canadian woman.

An example of what passes for father-son conversation in this book:

I threatened to tell the other cops that he had been out-drunk by a nun and he threatened to acquaint my skull with his fist. I said I had nothing to fear from a man who was floored by a nun and he said if it wasn’t for the goddamned cat, who would take his spot as soon as he stood up, he’d show me why they called him the Kid of Granite.

You can see how this book could make you smile at least occasionally the first time you read it. But be glad you could see you were getting to the end of it at the same time.

Guys in this book wear t-shirts with slogans on them like: Cops Only Have One Hand – the Upper Hand. Although they would never admit it, the guys do change their t-shirts. You can tell since the slogans change.

There is some nostalgia about growing up in a small community. It is interesting that the author, who is writing about the very small community where he grew up in western Canada, has evidently relocated to London. And how much of this book is autobiographical?

I finish the book and ask myself, “Why do people live that way?” Then I think, “This could be a great book if it answered that very question.” But it doesn’t answer the question, choosing to just draw a stark picture and letting me try to figure it out. But the life portrayed in this book is too far outside my world and I just don’t seem to be able to get it. The macho guys in the book don’t seem to get it either but mostly they don’t even want to talk about it – except maybe occasionally in the secrecy of their own minds – and a little bit at the end of the book. So I end up feeling sorry for them as well as for myself for not being able to do anything to help them out of their dilemma. Maybe it’s really OUR dilemma – that of the big world. We just can’t figure out how to live together.

I give Once You Break a Knuckle four stars for shining a light on the question but, since it leaves me without either an answer or hope that there is one, I can’t give it that fifth star. The Friend’s Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) has a slogan that these macho guys might want to consider putting on their t-shirts: War Is Not the Answer!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

–No-good whore, he said, and Winch felt a lump in his throat he couldn’t swallow, and he watched his own fist smack his dad in the jaw, an earthy sound, like someone tapping a piece of chalk to slate.

For a moment his dad didn’t react. He touched his chin. He glanced from car to woman to boy and then back at the house, his head tilted to the ground and his left eye squinting as though puzzled. Then he shot forward and those two massive pink hands hoisted Winch from the ground.

He landed hip-first, sideways. The impact spiked down his leg. His dad fell upon him, limbs methodical. Winch battered an arm aside, absorbed a half blow with his ribs, snugged his elbow over it. He smelled beer and deodorant and cigarettes, and Winch had never known his dad to smoke.

***

Once You Break a Knuckle is a collection of semi-linear linked short stories that take place in and around the Kootenay Valley in the British Columbia interior—specifically focussing on the town of Invermere. Focussing on a small group of families, the stories trace a line partially unstuck in time—while there is a certain sense of narrative progression to the stories, much like Jennifer Egan wrote in A Visit From the Goon Squad, the tales often break from their present tense and look deep into the past or far into the future, charting the mistakes and fights and transgressions of the many protagonists from several different perspectives. The result is a collection that feels claustrophobic in its setting—intended, I’m sure, to mark the limited personalities and opportunities provided by the very blue collar way of life—but expansive in its scope, offering a wide breadth of point-of-life experiences while allowing the reader to fill in certain chronological gaps on their own by interpreting events only partially alluded to.

A central conceit of oppressive masculinity gives a sharp edge to each story in the collection. Even when written from the third person, Wilson writes in the minds and dialects of the townsmen and women. His descriptions are minimalistic, often preferring to sharpen a tooth rather than coddle the reader with his metaphors. As such, the tone of the book rarely deviates, giving it a voice of unity that most linked collections lack, preferring instead to link specifically through plot or character arcs. A recurring bit of imagery that does play through most of the stories, to varying degrees of effectiveness, is the use of knuckles—as descriptors for facial features, as evidence of pain or failure, and as a creeping disturbance to the broken nature of one’s dreams or love lost.

The back-and-forth-through-time placement of the stories in the collection works most effectively when offering us glimpses into the lives of Will and Mitch, two young boys whom we see grow into adulthood and push apart from one another throughout the course of the book. However, the strongest, most abusive of the stories—the multi-part “Valley Echo”—also feels the most out of place within the overarching narrative, if it can be called such a thing. Though it’s tone and style remain in tight alignment with the rest of the book, the years as seen through its protagonist Winch’s eyes, and the confusion and abuse he suffers through his drug addled absentee mother and violent disaster of a father are engrossing enough as to separate this tale from the others as something that stands strong and on its own.

Wilson writes a string of effortlessly broken men, women, boys, and girls like a child pulling apart his G.I. Joes and toying with the elastics inside. People flit in and out of each other’s lives in perfunctory, sometimes shocking ways. Women are eyed as prizes to be won from the weaker men. And strength of will—or the perception thereof—rules all. Once You Break a Knuckle is a travelogue through personal tragedy, misery, and the often-crippling inability to see one’s possibilities beyond such a tiny corner of the world.

[Elinor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living in Invermere, I couldn't wait to read this book and do the commonplace thing of trying to recognize local characters. The author made this very easy, in some cases changing just a syllable in the person's name. I couldn't help wondering what some local people thought when they read a very thinly-disguised version of themselves.

D. W. Wilson is a real talent with a keen eye for observations, some of which were bang-on. I wish he had explored more fully the real advantages of growing up in a small community, but perhaps that will come later as he comes to terms with his past.

One thing that annoys me in all descriptions and media articles about this book . . . there is no such place as the Kootenay Valley. Invermere lies in the Columbia River valley. I think this was an example of Wilson slightly fictionalizing the setting for the book, and then the term being picked up by everyone else who doesn't know the difference. However, that's just the editor in me.

All in all, a wonderful book by a rising literary star.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

heard great things about this. People comparing him to Breece D'J Pancake - that's how good. Plus he's Canadian so he has a head start on all other mortals when it comes to fiction in general and short stories in particular.
finally come in at the library..
review coming (getting behind...)

Great gritty stories of (mainly) macho fathers and sons struggling to articulate their feelings, instead mock-fighting and/or actual fighting. (Some dads and sons hate each other and fight for real). Also of teenage gangs, crushes on teachers, and of usually unsuccessful attempts at finding girlfriends or maintain relationships generally. Of course it’s been done before, but Wilson does it very well. He’s particularly good on the smells of the small towns his protagonists inhabit in B.C., Canada.

He liked the smell of the bleeding hours, the frost or dew and, at home, the scent of a cold house and the cheap, cheap stovetop coffee he’d strain into a cheap steel thermos and drink in the shower, and while pissing..

And there it was: the smell of carbide and tar and dirty steel.

And descriptions of its inhabitants:

His hair gummied to his cheeks and his head tilted at an angle. This gruesome, spider-like scar spanned his chest and the whole left nipple was sliced off, snubbed like a button nose.

Her hair smelled like tea leaves and her lips had the cabbage taste of marijuana.

At first I started reading these in random order, but discovered that many are linked with the same protagonists appearing at a further point in their stories, so prior knowledge was needed (or a minor character would show up as the main one in another), so I read them in order. I have to say that the stories did become a mite repetitive towards the end, covering similar ground, albeit near-perfect in execution.

[Jay Hinman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found my way through about three quarters of the stories in D.W. Wilson's new collection "ONCE YOU BREAK A KNUCKLE" before concluding that I pretty much had the rough, blue-collar feel of working-class Western Canada nailed, and called it a rueful day. I'd been on a pretty good hot streak reading and enjoying unfamiliar authors who tackled similar terrain of the lost, the confused and the foregone, all living in misbegotten places far from our urban centers. Daniel Woodrell's "The Outlaw Album" was a good one mining this field for psychological pathos; even better was Jodi Angel's amazing "You Only Get Letters From Jail". Wilson's characters, all male and generally of good heart if not sound mind, work the construction sites and police forces of the Kootenay Valley in British Columbia, rubbing up often against the darker side of humanity: meth addicts, hockey-crazed dolts and troublesome and feisty women in many flavors. It had a lot to speak for it, including the NY Times review that made me buy it in the first place.

That said, I found it to be overwritten, with too many flourished crammed into paragraphs, and a certain grating conversational rhythm that didn't strike me as particularly "real" - a cardinal sin when trying to convey the desperate humanity lurking below the surface in our fellow citizens. At times Wilson descends into "hick" dialect and story-telling mannerisms, which is all well and good, considering his subject matter, but it sometimes seems so ham-handed it makes me want to fly up to Invermere and see if the "puck sluts" and working stiffs of the town could truly actually converse in this manner.

No question that Wilson's got some fine chops - I certainly didn't make it as far as I did in the book just to prove a point. He unwraps these seemingly tough men quite well at times, without having to take them through a crucible of pain or through major life events in order for us to get to some deeper sense of their missed opportunities and regrets. There are also some well-scripted portraits of dead-end towns, where everything fun more or less ends on high school graduation day, and adulthood comes crashing into full force as inelegantly as you can imagine, with quick divorces, unloved children and abandoned jobs in its wake. I see a few things to recommend in bits and spurts - just not in book length, I'm afraid.

[Carolyn Gerk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once You Break a Knuckle was my first Goodreads Giveaway win.
I was drawn to the novel because it is set in Western Canada (I live in Northern Alberta). The description on the back of the novel describes it as a collection of stories of 'good people doing bad things'. I think Once You Break a Knuckle could more accurately be described as a collection of snapshots telling the story of small town Canada (specifically Invermere for the most part).
The stories are an interconnected web of moments in the lives of the residents of the Kootenay Valley region. After a few stories I realized Wilson had strung each tale together with a chain of recurring characters; I would find myself trying to remember who was who and eventually gave this up, realizing that even though the same characters may pop up again, the stories stand alone, not requiring the support of the previous ones.
Often harsh and violent, Wilson has written a novel chock full of blood, sweat and testosterone. Relationships between men/boys and their fathers is an ever prominent theme, as is the breaking point that sets one man to challenge another. The women in Wilson's stories are secondary characters, sought after by narrators, or legends who have scorned the tellers of the tales.
Wilson has skill and promise and a distinctive edge. He writes in a blunt, realistic tone that, despite its roughness feels intimate and honest. A unique, gritty voice, full of truth and tension. I look forward to checking out Wilson's future writing.
The copy I won was an 'unedited and uncorrected' copy. The only tweaks I can suggest would be to lay off on 'wrapping up' the stories by telling the reader what will happen in the future. its not the technique so much that irked me from time to time, but the frequency of use.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truth be told, I read around half the stories in this collection and the similarity in subject matter, tone, strengths, and weaknesses was alarming. Enough for me to say, OK, if you're not enjoying it, do the author a favor and get off the train. Wilson's stuff was billed as a cousin to Breece DJ Pancake's. Second cousin thrice removed, turns out.

Each story, I kept looking for the epiphany, but it was too darn Catholic of me. Some stories I read and couldn't quite figure the why. Often he had an adolescent, sometimes a young man, and yes, a common thread of a character whose dad was a police officer who wore talking shirts. Lots of different ones, alas. Even on a few other characters in other stories.

True -- in the name of characterization, keen attention was paid to talking shirts and, once or twice, talking baseball hats that never spoke of baseball teams, but other stuff. You know what they don't say: The world is divided into two kinds of people: Those who read bumper stickers and those who don't (raises hand).

Set in British Columbia, but had a kind of Appalachia flavor to it. Rural. Lots of redneck locals making trouble. Lots of hanging around, walking about, scuffling, smoking, drinking, spitting, fighting, bullying. Some carpentry. Not enough grotesquery by half. You know, the fuel Winesburg, Ohio, sipped. Maybe if the characters were sadder they'd have appealed to a lonesome voice in me. But they weren't so much sad as pitiful.

That said, as a writing technician, Wilson shows some talent of the plain Hemingway-style talk and write. Shakes in a smell or a taste now and again, along with idioms and such. Just so....

[Caroline Woodward · Rating 5 out of 5]

A simply wonderful collection of short stories, set in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia and happily, recognized and published by a biggie, Hamish Hamilton and not consigned to the 'regional voice' ghetto in parochial Canadian literary terms. Most of these stories are written from the p.o.v. of young, yearning males: what to do about the hicks waiting to beat them up, weekend in, weekend out? Should they leave town and get an education? Should they follow in their fathers' footsteps and do the same job,and somehow earn the old man's respect? Should they let the local tough girls know they are crazy for them?
It is the bare-bones, muscular style of the writing that sets this book head and shoulders above the cliched tropes of small town settings and Wilson is a brilliant stylist. His ear for the vernacular of working class tradesmen is wonderfully honed, pitch perfect, for those of us who've spent any time working alongside these jokers, some of the funniest people around. His nuts and bolts descriptions of the daily tasks of carpentry and electrical/plumbing work evoke such authenticity and made me realize: we just don't read about this stuff in fiction, do we? Thanks to Wilson, a world is revealed. His comprehension and articulation of the muddled mysteries of male desires is nothing less than a tour de force. Look for this young man to become a major writer, period.

[AJourneyWithoutMap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once You Break a Knuckle: Stories by D.W. Wilson is a wonderful collection of short stories, set in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia. A collection of loosely connected vignettes means different opinions and reactions. Some will be sad and depressed, and some will read meaning into the stories, and that is how life actually is. On the whole, the book is about how people respond to things that happens in their lives.

Featuring 12 stories filled with likeable characters, memorable stories and the beautiful setting of Invermere which played a significant role in these stories, Once You Break a Knuckle is the story of people who are smashed and stoned. They are electricians, plumbers and cops. The stories are full of people bursting and crackling with life, however difficult that life may be. It is a collection of stories that depicts both the harsh reality of life, and its beauty in a small town in British Columbia. More than anything, Wilson’s fascination with relationships comes to the fore through his portrayal of the love-hate between father and sons.

In fine, Once You Break a Knuckle: Stories by D.W. Wilson is a very fine collection of short stories. Readers will truly appreciate the writing style of Wilson. Written mainly from the male perspective but nonetheless penetrating and perceptive, it makes for a delightful reading.

[George Ilsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those collections where more becomes less. If you read one story, you think “brilliant”. But after several, somehow one becomes less impressed. One drawback for me is that some of the characters reappear in other stories; yet the linkage is confusing more than enlightening. I was left trying to match up the other story with the current one, and was inevitably unsuccessful.

Another drawback is the author's spare prose, which invited confusion at times. If one is talking about Bill and Bob, and says "Bill met Bob when he worked at the restaurant", who worked at that restaurant? Some sentences I had to read several times, and I still don't know who worked at the restaurant. However if you're a big fan of nouns as verbs, where pick-up trucks don't just drive down the road, but are "missiled", then you will love this collection. You can expect calamity, death and violence at every turn of the road.

[Ayelet · Rating 5 out of 5]

D.W. Wilson, who I saw recently in the IFOA, has been receiving great reviews for his first book and for a good reason (he’s also won the BBC National Short Story in 2011 - the youngest person to have ever won it. He’s like, twelve). I didn’t expect to like his book as much as I had. His loosely linked stories, set in the Kootenay valley, centre on men—tradesmen, fathers and sons—and his language and imagery, his detailed descriptions of physical activities, reflect that. But despite it being a physical, masculine, sometimes violent book, the writing is so fluid and gorgeous and fine (I sometimes had to pause, go back and reread whole paragraphs) that there was something almost feminine about it. (Similar, I guess, to how physical fights can sometimes look like dancing…)

[Jen Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best thing about waking up too early this morning, is that I could make a strong cup of coffee, go back to bed, and read the final (title) story in this collection in the very quiet hours.

I've made this book last a long time and I think it's worth that. I'm on a run of quite amazing books, and have gone to a D.W. Wilson story in between them. It's been like going to a new and entire novel each time.

I'm so pleased to have read this, and am really looking forward to reading his debut novel.

But I'm going to wait a little while before I do that.

[Penguin Random House Canada · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm the social media person at Penguin, but I can't help be the champion of this book. Gritty, dark, spare, unflinching, this book takes Light Lifting's eloquent prose and deft handling of the subtlety of human relationships, and merges it with the hard-nosed rural stories of Annie Proulx. I wasn't prepared for these masculine tales of violence and betrayal to move me, but Wilson's writing is so keen and courageous, I couldn't help being intoxicated by the worlds he created.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reads like a Johnny Cash song but with more beer and heartache.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once You Break a Knuckle: Stories by D.W. Wilson is a collection of short stories based out of British Columbia. Wilson was born and raised in small towns in British Columbia. He has earned his PhD in creative writing from the University of East Angilia in Norwhich. He has the novel Ballistics to his credit as well as being shortlisted for several awards as well as winning the BBC National Short Story Award for “The Dead Roads," a short story that appears in this collection.

Short stories tend to be difficult for me. When I read a story I like it to go on for a while and have the fundamentals of a story: Setting, characters, plot, climax, conclusion. Most collections of short story collections I have read seem to lack this and are a collection of disjointed stories that seem to have the same appeal of asking some on how was work today? There might be an interesting bit here or there but most of the time its pretty slow.

As I got a story or two into Once You Break a Knuckle, I found a theme. Intended or not, I thought if Bruce Springsteen wrote short stories, it would be like this. There's a car (cobalt colored Camaro), several women, some regrets, the guy thing, and a story of a mathematician that really reminded me of parallel universe version of “Racing in the Street.” It is otherwise very blue collar and even includes a “State Trooper” (RCMP) and a wounded veteran coming home. Intermixed are some requiring themes of Kokanee beer, t-shirts and coffee mugs with corny but applicable sayings printed on them. It's almost like Asbury Beach, NJ and Invermere, BC are sister cities.

This is a great collection of stories. The most of the stories interconnect and the standalones do not leave you hanging or feeling like you walked in to a middle of a conversation and left before it was over. The characters are well developed and at times it seems like you are reading a memoir rather than stories. Collections like this one restore my faith in short story collections. An excellent read for all.

[Barbara Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obviously D. W. Wilson is a talented writer. Powerful language, powerfully used. A couple of the stories were really strong and compelling. BUT with no change of tone throughout the collection, it became a hard read. However I will be willing to try any of his other work to see how he develops. Hopefully, because there is potential there, he might produce something to deserve 5 stars!

[Lynn Despatie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of my favourite books in a while. It pulled at my heart strings. The characters were the same kind of people I grew up with in small town Northern Ontario. The book showed their humanity and let us see their thoughts and feelings as time passes. It’s a beautiful read about the relationships we have with one another.

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of stories based on an assortment of characters all coping with complexities of the human heart - missed opportunity, fear and regret, lost youth and life - contemplating how and why things got so bad.

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. This is mostly due to being able to relate to most of the characters.

[Delia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great collection of stories from the Kootenay region of British Columbia.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really well written and was enjoyable to begin with, I just found the underlying premise that all the stories took place in the same town a little monotonous, and very American.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so killer. It's kind of like the difference between flying someplace, and taking the train. The train *forces* you to slow down, forces you into a situation where there is nothing you can do but sit and look at the things slowly passing you by. So many beautiful sentences, that's one. The interrelatedness of the stories, that's two. The slow build through those stories to the cumulative effect - to what he's telling you about these people, in this place, the effect of the place on the people, it's whelming to say the least. There were at least 3 stories that, taken individually, I just had to put the book down to finish taking it all in, what just happened (not just in terms of events, but in the psychological place of the person or the community). One story's final paragraph paralyzed me (I won't tell you which). But taken as a whole, it's just really something.

Honestly, most of what I read was written by men. It would seem natural that men have an easier time writing men, about men, with men's voices. And that is true here, but what's different for me with these stories is the purity of these guys, of their vulnerability, their hearts just out there on their sleeves - I love that you can see past the public face of someone who might get labeled as an asshole to see that what's behind that behavior is so easily identifiable and just true. Very human.

I could go on but it would just be more gushing. Loved it.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a eulogy to place – and the people who rise out of a place that is so harsh that there are more commonalities to the brush and wild animals, the smells that pepper this nasty, short and brutish life, one a-glimmer throughout with the promise of the human spirit, not only of the child, the emerging man, but the fathers, the brothers, the elders, less so the mothers and sisters but there is a warmth and nonobjective quality to the women in the writing of Wilson, the most masculine of stylists, proof that REAL men writers need not remove women from their world to the point that they are less than the ideas the pugnacious male characters punch around like so much guff, a nod to the Normans – Mailer and Rush – who also serve women in a different way than Updike, Roth and Ford, the old men of American fiction and their shibboleths of jism-spurting palliatives; can we, the male writers in America, envision the woman who is “real” – a third “N” writer did, Nelson Algren, regardless of the narrowness of the vision? What does it take for men novelists, those who build a world, are their own gods, as we are when we create a novel, to put both man and woman at its center? That is what Wilson has done. No mean feat.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fathers and sons focused story collection told with an uncanny ability to invoke complex emotions and relationships through everyday interactions, tragedies, joys, accidents, and miscommunication. Explores the unwritten rules of conforming to ideals of manhood in small, rural towns based on resource extraction; where hunting, logging, fishing and other pursuits are a way of life. While the writing recreates the place quite well, especially in the context of character's emotions, the best parts deal with relationships sideways, revealing the aim in subtle ways.

While the points of view shift from character to character--offering us up varying perceptions on recurring people--they are all told from a male point of view. The women in the stories are given short shrift--part of the men's lives but apart from it. Again, this was a fathers and sons theme, but I kept wondering what the women really thought instead of what the men thought they were thinking.

Still, this was also a common theme in the stories: we never know what people are truly thinking, what they truly want, if we make them really happy. Those are universal worries but I wondered, frequently, why the characters couldn't just clear everything up with a good conversation.

[Patrick Faller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took this book out of the local library, and have since returned it; thus, the titles of the important stories escape me. One made the entire collection worth it--a longer narrative that reaches from father to son, and includes a scene in which the boy drives across a frozen lake in the car he has helped his metals shop teacher repair. The boy has lost his mother, has witnessed his father do his best to overcome the grief of that loss, and has struggled to define himself against the stereotypical backwoods roles assumed by most of the young people his age. The scene of the car whipping across the snow-covered ice of that frozen lake acts as a symbol of possibility--of hard work leading to satisfaction; of strange forces leading two people to each other; of escape. Mostly it's this sense of escape--from the confines of family, circumstance, landscape, and destiny--that drives Wilson's characters. What might have been a collection of stories focused on masculinity and its discontents becomes, in moments like these--and there are several scattered unevenly through multiple stories--a collection concerned with the idea of getting past obstacles of many kinds.

[Dan Downing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Today, 10 October 2013, it was announced that Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She is a Canadian known for her short stories. Oddly, I just finished D.W. Wilson's first collection of short stories. He is a Canadian.
Picking an author to win a Nobel is the longest of long shots, and I will not do that; however, I will confidently say that Mr. Wilson could have a brilliant career ahead of him. His second book, a novel, is already in print, so it appears he intends to keep at it. He should sell a lot of books and win heaps of praise.
"Knuckle" gives us a dozen stories about small towns and tough men and tough women. The title might mislead one into thing this is Noir; although written in a sparse and hard way, this is not genre literature, although thoughts of Rick Bass and Daniel Woodrell are had to keep at bay.
Unlike the MFA darlings (although he has taken writing classes) his stories are comprehensible, with endings or with at least discernable conclusions. He writes real prose about real people doing real things.
Recommended.

[Hollowspine · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first thought as I read these stories was, "Wow, this is some manly stuff." The cover of this book is actually a pretty good depiction of what's going on inside, a girl stands to one side, looking rather unimpressed while a boy flexes his biceps, staring at the muscle as if by so doing he could get it to pump up.

I could tell from reading that the author was very familiar with the scenery of his stories, the details of landscape and people were so precise, the situations and characters were very realistic. The collection was reminiscent of Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock, though perhaps a little less extreme, no meth involved anyway.

I was interested by the way the stories wove in and out of each other, forward and backward in time, the same event remembered by two different characters, though at times the amount of characters in the collection got to be a bit confusing.

This would be a great collection to recommend to readers who enjoyed Knockemstiff, Jonathan Lethem, but perhaps not for first time short story readers.