Flirt: The Interviews

by Lorna Jackson

In a steadfastly selfish and dishonestly original voice, the narrator’s sole project is to get closer to herself by inching nearer to the people who matter most to her, but to whom she means nothing. In The Interviews , Lorna Jackson has unleashed something new onto the world of literature, a series of short linked fictions exploring love and fame and longing, and the language we use to express them. The book might be a long comic essay on adolescent grief, or an essay on creativity, but mostly it’s a collection of short fictions meant to mock real interviews and to question the sort of information we find in them.

Genres: Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 11, 2008

About the author

A classically trained vocalist who spent a decade singing country rock in small-town BC bars, a big city Vancouver girl who shears sheep and plants corn in the country on Vancouver Island, an exacting university writing teacher by day and raucous hockey aficionado by night: Lorna Jackson is full of the sort of contradictions that make for bright, original writing.

After the saloon singing years, Jackson returned to university to pursue degrees in English and take writing classes with Jack Hodgins and Mark Anthony Jarman. By the end of her student years at UVic, she had published a collection of short stories, Dressing for Hope (Gooselane Editions, 1995) and was teaching in the departments of English and Writing. Her first novel, A Game to Play on the Tracks (Porcupine's Quill) was published in 2003. She has been a columnist for Quill and Quire magazine, a contributor to the Georgia Straight, and serves on the editorial board of Malahat Review. Her writing—fiction and creative nonfiction—has appeared in such magazines as Brick, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, Canadian Notes and Queries, and Canadian Fiction Magazine. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at UVic.

Reviews

[Shahna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't funny or clever.

[Phil Della · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flirt: The Interviews certainly takes an original approach to the interview format, the fake interview format that is. And I have to agree that Jackson chose some interesting subjects to pretend to interview. Definitely a Canadian slant here with the hockey players and the Can-con artists. I think the concept is innovative, and the proposed interview subjects piqued my interest; I'm an Alice Munro and Richard Ford fan, plus I do enjoy hockey and all things Gretzky. Although these subjects will make me veer to the roadside to learn more about them, I didn't get my fix from this book. The pretend interviewer injected herself into the story at every turn, thus becoming the true main character of the book. I felt a little bit ripped off by this because I wanted to learn about these personalities and instead they were used as a means to a different end. I wasn't surprised by this turn of events since it was as the book cover advertised. Still, I found the exercise complex but annoying, probably because I found this mock interviewer to be unappealing. What I did like about this format is how it humanized the interview subjects. They were no longer the elusive stars but instead interested and empathetic interviewers in their own right, helping the reporter come to grips with her past. Ultimately I found the idea difficult to get behind, and I lost interest. At under 100 pages it wasn't a big investment of time. There is some fine craftsmanship in here. Our author has a knack for precision in description and an authentic voice. And I like the irreverent tone.

[Shélah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clever story-telling.

I did find it difficult to differentiate between the voices - there should have been different font, or initials preceding the text as is often done in magazine interviews.