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Juliet Was a Surprise
Bill Gaston’s characteristic keen insight and wit dazzle in this new collection. Here, we see the world through the prism of unfamiliar perspectives: a bank executive whose excellent sex life might in fact be killing her, an amorous tree surgeon better attuned to the values of his “patients” than to other people, a vacationing schizophrenic wary of his housemates, a pizza-delivery boy convinced he’s witnessed magic—all struggling with the world as they see it.
This versatile collection—at times darkly playful, absurd, or shockingly real—illustrates how we can fail to understand the simplest of truths and how we are trapped by the peculiarities of our own points of view.
In Gaston’s hands, the outlandish becomes comprehensible and everyday life begins to look strange. What unifies these stories and their characters is the underlying faith in the humanity of even the most dangerously misguided among us.
Brazenly entertaining, but just as often heartbreaking, Juliet Was a Surprise portrays the humour and unfairness of life through the blunders of quixotic men and women with whom we can’t help but sympathize.
This versatile collection—at times darkly playful, absurd, or shockingly real—illustrates how we can fail to understand the simplest of truths and how we are trapped by the peculiarities of our own points of view.
In Gaston’s hands, the outlandish becomes comprehensible and everyday life begins to look strange. What unifies these stories and their characters is the underlying faith in the humanity of even the most dangerously misguided among us.
Brazenly entertaining, but just as often heartbreaking, Juliet Was a Surprise portrays the humour and unfairness of life through the blunders of quixotic men and women with whom we can’t help but sympathize.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
June 26, 2017
Bill Gaston's short story collection Juliet Was a Surprise is just my taste -- small bursts of insight into the sticky muddle that is interpersonal relationships, with characters who don't know as much about each other as they think they do; who don't even know themselves. These stories reminded me somewhat of Lynn Coady's Hellgoing, but where her characters were mostly angry and trapped, Gaston's are confused and surprised; like the naïve babies some accuse each other of being.
What to make of a situation where, on returning to a vacation house that's been rented for a solitary respite, an aging man finds a young couple who insists that they've also paid to be there for the week. When they make it plain that they won't be leaving, the young woman says:
Well, why did I find that image in House Clowns so menacing? I was caught up in the paranoia of the unnamed protagonist -- who wouldn't want to identify more with the staid professor than the scruffy hitchhikers? -- right up until he started acting oddly himself. When the ending comes, it's totally satisfying because the seeds were planted all along; I was just distracted by those swaying antlers.
Or what about the self-identified twerp in Any Forest Seen from Orbit -- a middle-aged virgin arborist who thinks of trees as sexy, to whom a deodora cedar is "not unlike a geisha in traditional pose: hips tilted one way, head tilted another; face down, demure; arms at dramatic angles, holding fans" -- what is he to make of Juliet, a married client who:
That was so bizarre that I thought the twerp (another unnamed protagonist) was imagining it until he returned at the appointed time and was asked to begin by combing out all of Juliet's body hair, She'd lift an arm and I'd draw the brush, once, twice, through her pit, the tines softly tugging through. Well, how did Juliet think that her game would end?
And again I'll note that this collection speaks to my own taste -- I am always open to a touch of the supernatural and was intrigued by Cake's Chicken and its tale of "two things science can't explain". Like Dale in To Mexico, I too read all of Carlos Castaneda in my youth (and unlike him, I did eventually muddle through Under the Volcano as well) and I enjoyed being in on the allusions. I loved the slow revelation of Chantal's dilemma in Tumpadabump (and also love that that perfect title doesn't actually occur in the story). Several stories are told well from a woman's perspective (although Geriatric Arena Grope wasn't my favourite), but it's the oblivious and unself-aware men who stand out: in Petterick, At Work in the Fields of Bulwer-Lytton, To Mexico, and Four Corners, male leads act aloof, as though that's their preference or a commentary on the women they find themselves with, but it's repeatedly revealed that it's the flaws in themselves that cement their isolation. And, overall, these stories are simply well-written.
And that's all you'd need to know about Cake and Danny, and how you feel when you look at a sunset might be all you need to know about yourself. A quick and consistently interesting read, Juliet Was a Surprise is easy to recommend.
What to make of a situation where, on returning to a vacation house that's been rented for a solitary respite, an aging man finds a young couple who insists that they've also paid to be there for the week. When they make it plain that they won't be leaving, the young woman says:
"We can be your house clowns." Eden put her hands to her head like antlers and swayed back and forth, big-eyed and unsmiling. Her eyes were playful but ironic and -- he didn't know why he thought of this word -- literate. But still possibly dangerous.
Well, why did I find that image in House Clowns so menacing? I was caught up in the paranoia of the unnamed protagonist -- who wouldn't want to identify more with the staid professor than the scruffy hitchhikers? -- right up until he started acting oddly himself. When the ending comes, it's totally satisfying because the seeds were planted all along; I was just distracted by those swaying antlers.
Or what about the self-identified twerp in Any Forest Seen from Orbit -- a middle-aged virgin arborist who thinks of trees as sexy, to whom a deodora cedar is "not unlike a geisha in traditional pose: hips tilted one way, head tilted another; face down, demure; arms at dramatic angles, holding fans" -- what is he to make of Juliet, a married client who:
...spun around at the door and mouthed, ferociously, "Ten after seven."
And then, good God, she pointed. Not at me. Not at the ground beneath her feet. No, she pointed at herself. Below the belt. She pointed at the prize, while announcing the time it would be claimed. I'd never seen a human do that. I understand now that it is something an animal might do, if it had fingers, and could tell time.
That was so bizarre that I thought the twerp (another unnamed protagonist) was imagining it until he returned at the appointed time and was asked to begin by combing out all of Juliet's body hair, She'd lift an arm and I'd draw the brush, once, twice, through her pit, the tines softly tugging through. Well, how did Juliet think that her game would end?
And again I'll note that this collection speaks to my own taste -- I am always open to a touch of the supernatural and was intrigued by Cake's Chicken and its tale of "two things science can't explain". Like Dale in To Mexico, I too read all of Carlos Castaneda in my youth (and unlike him, I did eventually muddle through Under the Volcano as well) and I enjoyed being in on the allusions. I loved the slow revelation of Chantal's dilemma in Tumpadabump (and also love that that perfect title doesn't actually occur in the story). Several stories are told well from a woman's perspective (although Geriatric Arena Grope wasn't my favourite), but it's the oblivious and unself-aware men who stand out: in Petterick, At Work in the Fields of Bulwer-Lytton, To Mexico, and Four Corners, male leads act aloof, as though that's their preference or a commentary on the women they find themselves with, but it's repeatedly revealed that it's the flaws in themselves that cement their isolation. And, overall, these stories are simply well-written.
Cake and Danny stood there taking in the sunset. It was a good one, no question -- a glorious wall of orange and purple, with little ruptures that looked like balconies, from which shot rays of sacred light, behind which God made vast, heart-breaking decisions. Because they were so still, I glanced at the two friends' faces. Cake's expression was complex, for once. He seemed chastised by the sunset, humbled. But in his look there was also hope that what it was telling him might be wrong. Anyway, that's what I imagined I saw. As for Danny, his take on the beauty was simpler -- he sneered. He was basically daring it.
And that's all you'd need to know about Cake and Danny, and how you feel when you look at a sunset might be all you need to know about yourself. A quick and consistently interesting read, Juliet Was a Surprise is easy to recommend.
August 18, 2014
Gaston is able to describe elements of the human condition in this book that seem to exist of the periphery of our day-to-day observations yet remain unnoticed until now. His prose is simple and easy to understand. Yet the scenes he creates are both familiar and surreal which makes his stories fascinating to read.
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July 18, 2014
Maybe I just don't understand the genre of short stories but this was just weird.
December 31, 2014
A solid collection of short stories. Some stories I was totally drawn in and had to reread them immediately. Others I did not enjoy and felt relieved when it was over.
December 30, 2024
A collection of short stories with powerful imagery and hidden emotions that flare up in the most unusual ways.
The images: a paranoid man swimming into a safe harbour populated by retirees of his ilk after committing a serious assault in “House Clowns”; a young man being followed by a peculiar smell at his girlfriend’s house in “Petterick”; an arborist combing the hair (head, legs, and pits) of his client in “Any Forest Seen From Orbit”; a husband falling to his death in a bath with a loud thump in “Tumpadabump”; A woman with breast cancer holding the hands of her daughter and a stranger at a Leonard Cohen concert and feeling life flowing out of her in “Geriatric Arena Grope”; a woman left dancing alone after her partner splits with her in a bar in Mexico in “To Mexico.”
Some imagery didn’t compute or was too subtle for me - I did not get “Cake’s Chicken.” Themes of Fear of the Other, couple breakups, sexual incompatibility or insufficiency, men not listening to their women, loss, revenge, regret, and paranoia permeate the collection. Each character harbours a volcano of dysfunction that erupts and is laid bare by the end of their story. There are few solutions or happy endings, just ironic ones and plenty of lava burns. The amateur writer in “At Work in the Fields of Bulwer Lytton” is an example of this dysfunction: he enters a hundred story contests each year and appears to submit sentences instead of stories; he hasn’t had sex in 20 years and turns down an offer on his first date after that drought ends; he starts his stories with “The unexamined life…” perhaps, that is the metaphor behind his story. The 45-year-old bank manager in “Black Roses Bloom” has vivid post-coital dreams which are diagnosed as mini-strokes that will lead to her death; but having finally discovered orgasms at her advanced age, she is damned if she is going to stop having sex.
As short stories go, where each word has to count, I found excessive verbiage in places and an inward focus – we were experiencing the stories from inside the narrators’ heads and feelings, which led to a sameness. It would have been nice to have a mix of attachment and detachment in the first and third-person narrators. A line from the last story, “Four Corners,” another breakup story because the couple is not listening to each other, stuck with me: “he needs to tell her his ears were full of skin.”
The images: a paranoid man swimming into a safe harbour populated by retirees of his ilk after committing a serious assault in “House Clowns”; a young man being followed by a peculiar smell at his girlfriend’s house in “Petterick”; an arborist combing the hair (head, legs, and pits) of his client in “Any Forest Seen From Orbit”; a husband falling to his death in a bath with a loud thump in “Tumpadabump”; A woman with breast cancer holding the hands of her daughter and a stranger at a Leonard Cohen concert and feeling life flowing out of her in “Geriatric Arena Grope”; a woman left dancing alone after her partner splits with her in a bar in Mexico in “To Mexico.”
Some imagery didn’t compute or was too subtle for me - I did not get “Cake’s Chicken.” Themes of Fear of the Other, couple breakups, sexual incompatibility or insufficiency, men not listening to their women, loss, revenge, regret, and paranoia permeate the collection. Each character harbours a volcano of dysfunction that erupts and is laid bare by the end of their story. There are few solutions or happy endings, just ironic ones and plenty of lava burns. The amateur writer in “At Work in the Fields of Bulwer Lytton” is an example of this dysfunction: he enters a hundred story contests each year and appears to submit sentences instead of stories; he hasn’t had sex in 20 years and turns down an offer on his first date after that drought ends; he starts his stories with “The unexamined life…” perhaps, that is the metaphor behind his story. The 45-year-old bank manager in “Black Roses Bloom” has vivid post-coital dreams which are diagnosed as mini-strokes that will lead to her death; but having finally discovered orgasms at her advanced age, she is damned if she is going to stop having sex.
As short stories go, where each word has to count, I found excessive verbiage in places and an inward focus – we were experiencing the stories from inside the narrators’ heads and feelings, which led to a sameness. It would have been nice to have a mix of attachment and detachment in the first and third-person narrators. A line from the last story, “Four Corners,” another breakup story because the couple is not listening to each other, stuck with me: “he needs to tell her his ears were full of skin.”
September 23, 2018
I enjoyed Bill Gaston’s prose, don’t get me wrong. But most of the stories in this collection were structurally weak and ended at a point which provided no closure whatsoever. I found most of them interesting at the start but as I got further into the piece, the plot just completed disintegrated from there, before cutting off at what could be a pivotal point for the story, if only it were a few pages longer. The weakest story was probably ‘Black Roses Bloom’ (unfortunate as I love the title) which basically had no clue what point it was trying to make. My favourite was ‘To Mexico’, with ‘House Clowns’ being a close second, which were the only two stories with a satisfactory amount of clarity, insight and proper narrative beats that led to their conclusions.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 10, 2023
No complaints about the writing or anything, two stars primarily because these stories didn't hold my interest or connect with me. Middle aged males who are sexually frustrated (not exclusively, but that's a strong current running through most of these stories): that's this book's loose theme. The first few stories are a bit in the suspense genre, then it's more incel/awkward relationships. Definitely quirky, definitely characters that don't usually feature as the protagonist (more usually on the margins). Somehow this book made it to my "to read" shelf at some point, and I thought I'd finally give it a go. You can probably give it a pass, unless you are looking for what I describe above.
January 2, 2019
This book gives a generally cynical and pessimistic overview of human relationships, particularly romantic ones. UGH! It is generally well-written, though with some repetition of characters' characteristics between stories, but UGH! What a pathetic way of looking at the world.
October 22, 2021
I rarely read short stories, but when I do it’s a treat to find Canadian-themed ones.
This collection, all set in and around British Columbia, are full of atmosphere, mystery, emotion … and great twists. Each one either forces or cajoles you into taking multiple points of view. What a great way to spend an afternoon of reading!
This collection, all set in and around British Columbia, are full of atmosphere, mystery, emotion … and great twists. Each one either forces or cajoles you into taking multiple points of view. What a great way to spend an afternoon of reading!
November 28, 2016
3.3 / 5
Full disclosure: Bill Gaston is one of my professors at university, and he's recently become one of my favourite teachers. I really like hearing him talk about his writing and publishing experiences, in terms of short stories and novels. He's a really great guy and I'm glad that I picked up this collection as an introduction to his work. Definitely going to be trying one of his novels next!
All around, this is a solid short story collection. I always feel kind of bad since I mainly give 3 stars to all short story collections, since they almost always "feel" better than that. But like every short story collection, this one has its hits and misses, which end up evening each other out. I loved the first story, which is about a schizophrenic on vacation and the ensuing shenanigans but I also really enjoyed "Black Roses Bloom" and "To Mexico."
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House Clowns: 5/5. What a fascinating concept - a vacationing schizophrenic off his meds ends up sharing a cabin with two unexpected visitors and it goes just as well as you might expect. I ended up reading this one twice - once when I was half asleep and again with a more engaged (and awake) mind. Very skillfully planned and written.
Cake's Chicken: 3/5. What a weird story. I was interested, but the narrator is super unlikeable.
Any Forest Seen From Orbit: 3/5. I honestly would have rather spent more time with the tree than Juliet. More trees, please!
Tumpadabump: 4/5. Great title, fascinating characters.
Petterick: 2/5. Good, but not for me.
Geriatric Arena Grope: 2/5.
To Mexico: 4/5. Aaaaaah, I liked this one a lot. The main character was highly unlikeable, but I was super intrigued anyways.
Black Roses Bloom: 5/5. I think this is my favourite short story of the whole book. I absolutely loved the premise, that being the idea that a woman has a mini-stroke every time she orgasms, but I also really liked the inconclusiveness of the ending.
At Work in the Fields of the Bulwer-Lytton: 4/5. This story was just hilarious - a guy deliberately trying to win a bad short fiction contest? Fantastic.
Four Corners: 3/5. A solid ending to the collection. I feel so bad for Cheryl - what a way to introduce your dad to your new partner.
Full disclosure: Bill Gaston is one of my professors at university, and he's recently become one of my favourite teachers. I really like hearing him talk about his writing and publishing experiences, in terms of short stories and novels. He's a really great guy and I'm glad that I picked up this collection as an introduction to his work. Definitely going to be trying one of his novels next!
All around, this is a solid short story collection. I always feel kind of bad since I mainly give 3 stars to all short story collections, since they almost always "feel" better than that. But like every short story collection, this one has its hits and misses, which end up evening each other out. I loved the first story, which is about a schizophrenic on vacation and the ensuing shenanigans but I also really enjoyed "Black Roses Bloom" and "To Mexico."
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House Clowns: 5/5. What a fascinating concept - a vacationing schizophrenic off his meds ends up sharing a cabin with two unexpected visitors and it goes just as well as you might expect. I ended up reading this one twice - once when I was half asleep and again with a more engaged (and awake) mind. Very skillfully planned and written.
Cake's Chicken: 3/5. What a weird story. I was interested, but the narrator is super unlikeable.
Any Forest Seen From Orbit: 3/5. I honestly would have rather spent more time with the tree than Juliet. More trees, please!
Tumpadabump: 4/5. Great title, fascinating characters.
Petterick: 2/5. Good, but not for me.
Geriatric Arena Grope: 2/5.
To Mexico: 4/5. Aaaaaah, I liked this one a lot. The main character was highly unlikeable, but I was super intrigued anyways.
Black Roses Bloom: 5/5. I think this is my favourite short story of the whole book. I absolutely loved the premise, that being the idea that a woman has a mini-stroke every time she orgasms, but I also really liked the inconclusiveness of the ending.
At Work in the Fields of the Bulwer-Lytton: 4/5. This story was just hilarious - a guy deliberately trying to win a bad short fiction contest? Fantastic.
Four Corners: 3/5. A solid ending to the collection. I feel so bad for Cheryl - what a way to introduce your dad to your new partner.
October 19, 2014
A solid collection of short stories, some a little more out there than others, though all basically about human struggles.
I preferred the female led stories, particularly one where a man has died and his young mistress wonders whether the death was accidental, on purpose, or a joke gone very wrong. I thought that story had the most satisfying ending of the lot, despite, or maybe partially because of a question left unanswered.
Maybe I favored the female driven stories because being female I just naturally identify with them more, but it seemed to me that their stories were more subtle and featured more everyday snapshots of life, as opposed to say the story where an unattractive arborist is pulled into a one-night stand that involves a hair fetish and to put it mildly, he doesn’t deal well with the morning after, that one, as well as a couple others had a more unreal quality that didn’t appeal quite as much to me.
I received an ARC copy from the publisher.
I preferred the female led stories, particularly one where a man has died and his young mistress wonders whether the death was accidental, on purpose, or a joke gone very wrong. I thought that story had the most satisfying ending of the lot, despite, or maybe partially because of a question left unanswered.
Maybe I favored the female driven stories because being female I just naturally identify with them more, but it seemed to me that their stories were more subtle and featured more everyday snapshots of life, as opposed to say the story where an unattractive arborist is pulled into a one-night stand that involves a hair fetish and to put it mildly, he doesn’t deal well with the morning after, that one, as well as a couple others had a more unreal quality that didn’t appeal quite as much to me.
I received an ARC copy from the publisher.
September 15, 2015
Maybe it was the fact that I initially didn't realize this was a collection of short stories, but I found that Juliet Was a Surprise was just... kind of drab. The stories seem to all follow the same basic tenet of Man Believes Thing About Woman, Tries To Tell Woman, Woman Is Better Than Him. The only one that really avoided that, that I really liked, was the one about the mother with cancer who goes to a Cohen concert. I liked it, since it felt more real. Less rote.
I don't recommend this book, but it may be just that I was expecting a single story.
I don't recommend this book, but it may be just that I was expecting a single story.
October 13, 2014
There's a fine line between trying to write a story that is provocative or thoughtful and one that is simply weird. Unfortunately, many of these stories land on weird. The ones that aren't weird either have issues with plausibility or turn out to be boringly cliche. On the upside, the writing is solid and certainly evokes a mood or emotional response from the reader - Creepy discomfort for the most part.
January 3, 2015
Bill Gaston is such a strong writer, I always find something of value in whatever he does. This collection didn't have the impact on me that his Gargoyles did and I suspect I'm not the ideal reader for it. Be that as it may, I very much enjoyed "House Clowns" and "Four Corners," interestingly enough the first and last stories in the book.
November 4, 2014
I loved Gaston's The World and thought I would like this, too, because of his writing. I heard him at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts last August and he gave us teasers about this book. I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of short stories but I thought this might be good. I was very disappointed.
May 9, 2015
Short stories are not about plot or setting, but are glimpses into the human condition. Bill Gaston is a talented observer of motivation and rationalization. His stories weave the plausible with the range of human emotion and often the absurd.
I'm not the biggest fan of short stories, but I would have to admit that Bill Gaston writes with a wonderfully perspective voice.
I'm not the biggest fan of short stories, but I would have to admit that Bill Gaston writes with a wonderfully perspective voice.
October 19, 2014
Not a favourite read. Some of the stories were too obtuse for me, some were very, very good. A book that makes you think about what happens after the story is written.
February 27, 2015
Starts really, really, promisingly strong, but lost steam for me about a third of the way through. I finished it, but would've liked a little more... something from this collection. 3.5 stars.
July 4, 2015
Weird, not sure why this book was an Evergreen reads winner
April 9, 2015
What a series of delightfully weird stories! Really enjoyed reading them!
September 3, 2015
Enjoyable.
August 22, 2015
liked a couple of the stories in this collection but there was some i didn't like hence the rating
September 25, 2015
I liked how you got to glimpse different moments of time in people's lives. On the whole though I found the stories just weird and sort of depressing. I guess I just didn't get it.
September 29, 2015
Not a short story fan, but it was for bookclub so I gave it a try. A number of the stories had potential and I wished there was more to them. All in all an interesting collection.
October 22, 2015
If you read one story from this book read Black Roses Bloom.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews