Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim

by Jacob Wren

What are the best ways to support political struggles that aren’t your own? What are the fundamental principles of a utopia during war? Can we transcend the societal values we inherit? Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is a remarkably original, literary page turner that explores such pressing questions of our time.

A depressed writer visits a war zone. He knows it’s a bad idea, but his curiosity, and obsession that his tax dollars help to pay for foreign wars, draw him there. Amidst the fighting, he stumbles into a small strip of land that’s being reimagined as a grassroots, feminist, egalitarian utopia. As he learns about the principles of the collective, he moves between a fragile sense of self and the ethical considerations of writing about what he experiences but cannot truly fathom. Meanwhile, women in his life—from this reimagined society and elsewhere—underscore truths hidden in plain sight.

In these pages, real world politics mingle with profoundly inventive fabulations. This is an anti-war novel unlike any other; an intricate study of our complicity in violent global systems and a celebration of the hope that underpins the resistance against them.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Novels

220 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 2024

About the author

Jacob Wren makes literature, collaborative performances and exhibitions. His books include: Polyamorous Love Song, Rich and Poor, Authenticity is a Feeling and Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim. As artistic director of the interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created performances such as: En français comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize, Individualism Was A Mistake, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information, Every Song I’ve Ever Written and Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition. He is co-founder of the orchestra The Air Contains Honey whose first album is forthcoming in 2026. His internet presence is often defined by a fondness for quotations.

Reviews

[Adam Ferris · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And I saw, time and time again, that the reality that everyone dies was always, also, a question of how we should live. That to come fully to terms with our own impermanence was the only way one could begin to live for a cause larger than oneself. [...] I don't know if the lesson is that everything comes and goes and learning to live this is the only real form of sanity. That whatever we choose to fight for, it can't be just some shallow, puffed-up sense of permanence. The things we fight for have to be the things that grow, evolve, and change. "

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is a perfectly timed literary thriller about a writer visiting a war zone. Jacob Wren's latest knocks down the fourth wall and explores the ways to support a political struggle that aren't your own. Can a utopia exist? Can this society take place in a war zone? Jacob Wren's writing blends the made-up with the enmeshed global systems of the military-industrial complex that reigns supreme in our sick societies. With precision and prowess, his writing navigates the nuances of war with insight and intelligence that keeps the story moving forward. Underneath it all, he finds a burgeoning hope in the darkest of places.

"Violence is sometimes necessary but it is never good. A bomb doesn't know good from bad, it falls and explodes and kills. And every time it does, someone profits. Someone makes money."

In addition to writing one of the best pieces of CanLit this year, Wren also walks the walk when it comes to his politics. Based on the principles he writes about in Dry Your Eyes to Perfect Your Aim, he is one of the authors who has withdrawn their name and worthy work from consideration for the biggest prize in Canadian literature due to their questionable funding by a bank that profits off of war and the killing of innocents.

"What a society decides to do, what a society actually does, what a society chooses to spend its money on, over time becomes the truth of that society."

If the personal is political, then isn't the political personal? This was a question that I had throughout reading this reflective and well-written book. No matter where your political beliefs fall, Jacob Wren's new novel demands to be read for its poignant and propulsive nature. And I will double down on Dry Your Eyes to Perfect Your Aim on being one of the best pieces of Canadian Literature this year. Just don't let the prize lists fool you. You're smarter than that.


"I suppose, in good literary fiction, the author isn't supposed to break the fourth wall and speak directly to the reader. But I've never completely understood why not."

"I don't want to live in a world that contains torture. But we don't get to decide which world we live in. We only get to decide whether or not we try to do anything about it."

"This book is not reality. But why is it not reality?"

“And once again it makes me realize how never in my life as a writer have I genuinely tried to get anything “right,” if getting it right means an accurate portrayal of reality, or even if it means providing access to something we might call truth or wisdom. In fact, it now seems to me, I have attempted to do almost the opposite, a search for how to “get it wrong” as evocatively as possible. Or to fully engage in the struggle between getting it right and getting it wrong. Of course, I’m always considering ethics, so I would never want to be ethically wrong, or to harm anyone with my words, but nonetheless there is the desire to be artistically off-kilter in ways that create the possibility of seeing things anew. To fully admit that I don’t know. But now I’m not so sure. Rethinking all such assumptions might be one of the many ways I find myself trying to change.”

"So many times I've heard that the personal is political, but I worry my life doesn't clearly reflect this fact. Since I'm not doing enough. But then again, perhaps most of us aren't. If we were, the world would be in considerably better shape."

[Mulgrave · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s considered polite when reviewing veiled autofiction to respect the curtain between the author and their avatar in the text. Nevertheless, I would describe the plot of Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim as “depressed novelist Jacob Wren imagines walking across a warzone to reach the Rojava autonomous zone of northeastern Syria, conducts interviews.”

Wren regards the residents of Rojava (referred to in the novel as “the thin strip of land”) with awe, the embodiment of militant, eco-feminist collectivist principles that western activists have been largely unable to actualize. Wren, as both character and author, humbles himself before the iconic women he imagines: their freedom fighters are hyper-competent where he is a fumbling physical liability; their praxis burns with profound certainty, while his narration wreathes itself in meta-fictional devices and anguished self-reflection. The author’s insistence on constantly reminding you that what you are reading is fiction blunts the impact of otherwise gripping passages and makes the successes taking place in “the thin strip of land” seem more like literary inventions than allusions to documented facts.

Still, Wren is one of the few “political” writers of quality working in the Canadian small press. If you are able to accept that Dry Your Eyes is more a work about the paralysis of western do-gooders than the lives of active revolutionaries, it has considerable insight to offer—particularly on the centrality of faith to radical political activism. In its final third, the protagonist and a character from “the thin strip of land” struggle with the grey lassitude of living in Canada after experiencing revolutionary life. Faith is a phenomenon fed by privation, sparked by opportunity, and sustained by fellowship—to maintain a faith in revolution in the face of the comfortable, mannered aloneness of Canadian culture requires uncommon conviction. Having thus diagnosed the challenge, Wren uses his final act of authorial sleight of hand to move himself out of the way, implying that a younger generation shaped by eroding material conditions, grounded in collectivist principles, and raised without a reflexive shame at its own being will be the locus of a change to come. It’s a notion based on faith as much as evidence, but belief is what is called for now.

- Mul

[Amy Mellisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You're going to write about us, but you're never going to get it right."

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim by Jacob Wren is a well written and challenging novel. After sinking into the first chapter I became very absorbed by the writing and the perspective of the depressed writer who visits a war zone despite consequence. He wanders into an area to what he describes as a 'practical utopia', where a grassroots feminist egalitarian collective has taken root.

It properly captures the hypocrisy of watching a war from afar against the truth of living in one. I really loved the contrasts in the book, with the consistent reminder throughout that 'This book is not reality.' breaking the fourth wall. It pitched the main character's perspective of events against the people he writes about via letters those people send back to the writer after he sends them a copy of the book he writes about his experience.

I've just finished reading it, but I think it's a book that's going to stick in my mind for some time. Thank you to @zgreads and @bookhugpress for gifting me a copy of this book.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took myself out for a fun little brunch date with DRY YOUR TEARS TO PERFECT YOUR AIM by Jacob Wren and I quite enjoyed this novel! I went into this book without reading the synopsis (as usual!) and it’s a heavy read. I think I read one or two other books while reading this one because I needed some breaks. It’s about a writer who travels to a village in a war zone and gets kidnapped for ransom and then gets into the politics of the place. I loved this quote on page 32: “I can’t believe I came on this trip and didn’t bring anything to read. It’s like I don’t know myself at all. Reading is often my main activity and I get anxious when I’m without it.” (This is why I always carry a book in my bag!)

There’s a great moment when the main character is calmed by singing as he doesn’t speak the language that shows how music is a universal language and there were several other moments when characters were trying to relate to each other through translators or writing that showed that need for connection.

I really enjoyed how the author broke the forth wall and reinforced it as this novel is not reality and it’s shown in the structure and varied use of quotation marks and dashes. I really liked how unconventional this novel is! And I love that the cover related to the content!

Thank you to ZG Reads and Bookhug Press for my gifted review copy!

[Krystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so confusing because I thought it was non-fiction. He doesn't actually travel to a war-torn country because he feels guilty and depressed, bored with his privileged life. Once I knew it was fiction, I was less mad. And obviously he dies 4 times in the book. Definitely fiction. He based the book on a true location that he references at the end of the book. It was pretty interesting and even funny at parts. I've definitely never read a book like this before.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, a writer longing for an experience that will take him outside himself visits a war-torn country and suffers consequences he fully expected and others he never saw coming. The narrator of Jacob Wren’s provocative anti-war novel, who remains unnamed throughout the book, makes the trip knowing from the outset that it’s a “mistake” he will probably regret. But he is driven to act: first, out of guilt because his country is the aggressor and he can’t help but feel complicit; and second, out of curiosity because the machinery of war doesn’t come cheap and he wants to see first-hand how his tax dollars are being spent. The geography of the novel is hazy, but the reader assumes that the distance between the narrator’s country and the one he’s visiting (often referred to as “the thin strip of land”) is not great. The narrator’s plane lands, a friend picks him up, and together they enter the other country, where despite the ongoing conflict the friend still lives. She’s offered her help because he’s asked, but she strongly disapproves of his reasons for being there (she says he is “stupid” and “misguided”). In fact, while he’s with her they argue almost constantly, the narrator trying half-heartedly to defend his actions, the friend poking holes in his reasoning. This section ends with the narrator leaving the friend’s apartment in the middle of the night and, naïve and ill-prepared, making his way on foot into the conflict zone. In the sections that follow, the narrator lives through a succession of distressing and violent events—a modern-day rite of passage—that sees him shot at, fleeing falling bombs, abducted and thrown into the trunk of a car, rescued and brought into a community of idealistic resistance fighters, captured and tortured, and finally freed to make his way home. The action is spread over roughly a year. Much of what we read in Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is internal monologue, the narrator observing in minute detail what’s happening around him. He questions the morality of his actions, wonders at his motives, records his thoughts in the aftermath of trauma, speculates on the states of mind of the people with whom he finds himself, both friend and foe. He describes what it is like to live and work and even entertain hopes for the future under a pervasive threat of annihilation, and comments upon his attempts to connect with and make sense of a group of women constructing, from the ground up and out of the rubble of a country under attack, a self-sustaining, environmentally responsible, egalitarian society. After his capture, we see him struggle to understand the forces that motivate people who make a living and seem to enjoy inflicting pain on other human beings. Along the way there are lengthy ruminations on the morality of war and the possibility of remaining an objective, non-partisan observer of other people’s suffering. The narrator constantly doubts and second-guesses himself, acknowledging the folly of his actions, admitting that, as an outsider, understanding is probably beyond his realm, but finds solace in the belief that his acts of witnessing and recording are vital. In Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, Jacob Wren has written a courageous, alarming and utterly original work of fiction. The ethical conundrums it addresses are myriad and relevant, and while it offers no solutions, it is relentless in its exposure of unflattering human truths that many of us, given a choice, would prefer to avoid.

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4/5)

[Karen Ocana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very difficult to classify this book.
Enthralling, intricate, antifa, anti-war, engaged, empathetic, polyphonic
a thriller of sorts
I read it too fast, or I read it incompletely, or I wasn't fully engaged, or.
And this was last spring, when I was putting the final touches to my book of poetry
It's a great book I'm doing no honour in reviewing. I'm perfecting the aim to read it again with dry eyes.

[sam °❀⋆.ೃ࿔* · Rating 3 out of 5]

very mixed feelings about this book.

on the one hand, i'm happy to see a contemporary work from my country that addresses the ongoing horrors in Palestine. given the amount of censorship backed by state power, to write about the apartheid in a way that acknowledges the extent of war crimes being committed is courageous and so necessary. i like how the book tries to overcome nihilism by emphasizing the power of collective action. i also like how, despite being a solitary activity, the practices of reading and writing are framed as a form of collective action.

on the other hand, i can't shake the feeling that this is a cheesy and somewhat disrespectful way to approach very serious subject matter; to create a fictionalized account of a white dude so depressed he drops everything for a knowingly suicidal trip to the west bank; to have the character constantly whine about how his perspective prevents him from truly grasping what is going on; endless self-flagellation; black mirror approach, it seems. the end drags on a bit incessantly. the afterword is extremely unnecessary, as is the mention of the collapse of the world market for oil. overall, i don't think fiction was the right form for this content.

i don't know, my negative feelings would have possibly been remedied by an afterword from Wren's perspective on how this book was written. were Palestinians interviewed during the writing process? what kind of research was conducted? the revolutionary moments snippet in the notes doesn't seem to cut it. more efforts should have been made to tie the fictional character to real life.

[Grace (graceisbookedandbusy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

✨Book Review✨
Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim - Jacob Wren

Thank you to @zgreads and @bookhugpress for sending a copy for my review!

I’m on vacation right now so my posts may be a bit all over the place but I finally finished my first book of November on the flight so yay! Review time.

This book is described as an anti war novel, you follow an author who inserts himself in an active war zone so he can see first hand what his tax dollars are funding overseas. The author frequently breaks the fourth wall and it kind of feels at some points like you’re listening to someone speak to you with their first hand experience which I thought was very cool and different.

Here are a few of my favourite quotes without giving too many away:

“We cannot let businesses work together to undermine the public good.”

“Because the state always ends up siding with the capitalists and the capitalists then end up siding with the dictators, because they think they’ll make more money that way.”

“But we don’t get to decide which world we live in. We only get to decide whether or not we try to do anything about it.”

While I was reading these quotes I felt they were very timely …

I would definitely recommend this one if you like a book that makes you reflect on the state of the world and think deeply.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Bold Call to Confront War’s Brutal Reality.

How did the book make me feel/think?

In “Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim,” Jacob Wren offers a striking reflection on war and human frailty. It’s 2024, and we still destroy each other, convinced we’re on opposing teams, desperate to protect “Utopian (?)” values from perceived threats. Wren lays bare our flawed nature, showing how easy it is to view war as something distant—like a video game—rather than the brutal reality faced by those we label “other.”

This powerful work of historical fiction pulls no punches, revealing the horrors of war and the dangers of our naïve belief our way is the only way.

Say no to war—LOUDLY. Humanity depends on it.

I now know something about the Rojava region of Syria and the feminist freedom fighters searching for a more just and peaceful world.

WRITTEN: 29 October 202 

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading this I was reminded of Munir Hachemi’s excellent https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... in the way the author plays with writing to interrogate writing, mixing metafiction and autofiction into what felt, to me, like a conversation between me and the author’s inner monologue. It isn’t real, and what has been depicted isn’t real, but what the novel itself is depicting is, in fact, real. To wrestle with that took time and patience that I am grateful this book demanded.

[Enid Wray · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little book… kind of quirky, and asking some pretty big questions about the meaning of home, the power of art, the impact of colonisation, the strength of community, the inevitability of death, and the meaning of life…

The writing style most definitely won't be for everyone...

Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital copy.

[Whatithinkaboutthisbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC Review Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim by Jacob Wren
Pub date September 16, 2024

🌟🌟🌟🌟

Thanks @bookhugpress and @netgalley for the chance to preview this book.

This is such a unique and inventive novel. A depressed writer visits a war zone. He knows it’s a bad idea, but his curiosity and obsession that his tax dollars help to pay for foreign wars draw him there. Amid the fighting, he stumbles into a small strip of land that’s being reimagined as a grassroots, feminist, egalitarian utopia. The writing is at times like the narrator stream of consciousness, at other times the writer is talking to you and then himself. It sometimes felt like a conversation. Having the narrator, the friend and the country described all be unnamed was an unusual choice. I loved it because it highlighted the tragic fact that this could be any country.

“I want the freedom you take for granted. All the freedoms. To walk up this mountain and know it’s my home and it will survive….Some people can go wherever they want and others can’t and it’s the worst bullshit.”

The concept of not being able to end a war through fighting but to try and end it by showing everyone that there is another way to live together was so thought provoking. It raised questions if our individualistic nations would ever be ready for that or if only countries that have had to communally rely on each other for survival would embrace this kind of communal respect and care. This was inspired by Rojava which makes me want to deep dive into that. I love books that send me into a research frenzy.

The narrator’s self absorption, “being a tourist in life”, even in his own life really highlighted how little attention most of us pay to the experiences of others or the tragedies occurring in other parts of the world. Our privilege of freedom and safety prevent us from truly understanding these lived experiences. The overarching theme of self awareness without theme is very well done and makes you take a look at yourself.

Overall I thought this was a unique and innovative book that I thoroughly enjoyed. The writing style may not be for everyone, but if you want thought provoking book this is for you.
4m

[Alison Gadsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exceptionally complex anti-war novel examines the capitalistic structures that sustain wars; war-torn countries and their citizens, but more than that, DRY YOUR TEARS TO PERFECT YOUR AIM from @jacobwren asks the reader to consider who is allowed to write about any of it, and whomever does, what of any of it can be true?
Wren writes several times that “this book is not reality.” We’re told the narrator is unreliable, that he may or may not survive to the end, but how can a book exist if the protagonist dies? We’re also told that nobody dies in this novel. We’re told the novel isn’t about him, but about them. We’re then told he doesn’t have a right to tell the story, and then much later, we’re told that none of what he wrote happened the way he said it did. Maybe the narrator’s writing a diaristic, self-referential, navel-gazing, white saviour novel, or maybe he’s writing an indictment of navel-gazing white-saviour stories! And maybe it’s neither.
For me, this novel is a study in human behaviour. It asks us to consider why should we care. Why do we care for our own children, but not others in the world? It indicts capitalism: a quote from an Indigenous author, “There is enough for everyone, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” This is in a magnificent section—and one of my favourites in the novel—where a citizen is mad that he can’t sell his house, not because he wants to, but because he wants to know that he can. The novel asks why we’re comfortable with depictions of violence, but sex is nasty. It wonders about how we see people, what we see, and then how we write about them. And throughout the novel, the narrator (or perhaps Wren himself) wants us to know that writing is everything, that even in fiction we must not “discount or dismiss the real.”
The writing—tension explodes from every page—exists without indentations, few paragraph breaks, only the occasional reprieve from a letter or recorded interview and a bit of quoted dialogue. I haven’t read another book whose narrative structure contains as much anxiety as DRY YOUR TEARS TO PERFECT YOUR AIM, and for me the structure is not only a defining feature but its brilliance.

[Manuel Vargas · Rating 5 out of 5]

My introduction to the work of Jacob Wren was in 2014 with his book Polyamorous Love Song. I wrote a review about it and was one of my first pieces of writing ever published as a book form. There will be some more afterwards but the excitement of the first ones are never comparable. I miss that feeling.

Ten year later I'm reading his latest book, writing a review in goodreads, perhaps a more modest outlet but still, it's writing.

That is the effect I have after reading him. I want to do more. I want to read more. I want to express myself more. I want to find a way feeling I'm making a difference, even when the idea itself is silly, I find it endearing.

The thin line of land referred in this novel is everywhere now. It's an analogy that unfortunately can be said of many current locations being actively bombed. All very thin lines of land. We all live in those lines. I myself do not feel that safety net I felt back in the day, when all the problems seem to be far away. I feel them now more closely than ever. And it's scary, but scarier is that we are still safe, and they don't. We have the luxury to read and write, comfortable, at home, while they do not have a home and their lives are ruined or extinguished. I'm privileged. The only thing I can do is remembrance, acknowledging, and keep learning.

I loved many passages of this book, how it feels like an auto-biography but fictional. How the main character is the author himself, but a different version, not the real one, cause the real is always a mystery, even for oneself. It is the one that speaks directly to us, the reader, the one who guides us through these horrific passages, with a sense of humor to cheers us up even in the most obscure situations. There is a party in this book, and I wanted to be part of it.

[AP · Rating 5 out of 5]

a wonderfully written anti-war novel that distrusts both heroism and spectatorship. i recognised the narrator’s anxiety not as doubt about politics, but about position: what it means to care, to oppose, and still be structurally entangled in the systems you’re resisting.

[Jacob Wren]

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim has gotten some really nice reviews: https://radicalcut.blogspot.com/2024/...

*

“And once again it makes me realize how never in my life as a writer have I genuinely tried to get anything “right,” if getting it right means an accurate portrayal of reality, or even if it means providing access to something we might call truth or wisdom. In fact, it now seems to me, I have attempted to do almost the opposite, a search for how to “get it wrong” as evocatively as possible. Or to fully engage in the struggle between getting it right and getting it wrong. Of course, I’m always considering ethics, so I would never want to be ethically wrong, or to harm anyone with my words, but nonetheless there is the desire to be artistically off-kilter in ways that create the possibility of seeing things anew. To fully admit that I don’t know. But now I’m not so sure. Rethinking all such assumptions might be one of the many ways I find myself trying to change.”
- Jacob Wren, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim






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