Pockets: A Novel

by Stuart Ross

Brilliant experimental, surrealist fiction from the award-winning author of Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew

A wonderful dream and a horrific nightmare, a fuzzy consciousness of pain and family, Pockets is a novel of fragments — both literally and figuratively. In a series of prose-poem chapters, the nameless narrator, in a largely Jewish 1960s suburb in the northern reaches of Toronto, repeatedly enters the world, as if for the first time. His landscape is one of trilobite fossils, bicycles with banana seats, Red Skelton, and overwhelming loss. Among shadows that both comfort and threaten, a brother who drifts through the sky, he finds his narrative full of pockets of emptiness he can’t help but try to fill.

A heartbreakingly personal and profound work, Pockets redefines the novel, delivering infinite scope in something diminutive, pocket-sized. Every reading brings new revelations.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry

90 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2017

About the author

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad’s office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto’s Yonge Street wearing signs like “Writer Going To Hell: Buy My Books,” selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks.

A tireless literary press activist, he is the co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and now a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective. He had his own imprint, a stuart ross book, at Mansfield Press for a decade, and was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine for eight years. In fall 2017, he launched a new poetry imprint, A Feed Dog Book, through Anvil Press.

Stuart has edited several small literary magazines, including Mondo Hunkamooga: A Journal of Small Press Stuff, Syd & Shirley, Who Torched Rancho Diablo?, Peter O’Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems, and, most recently HARDSCRABBLE.

He is the author of two collaborative novels, two solo novels, two collections of stories, and twelve full-length poetry books. He has also published two collections of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer and Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (both from Anvil Press), and edited the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press) and co-edited Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament (Mansfield Press).

Stuart has taught writing workshops across Canada and works one-on-one with authors on their manuscripts. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario. In spring 2009, Freehand Books released his first short-story collection in more than a decade, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, to almost unanimous critical acclaim.

Stuart was the fall 2010 writer-in-residence at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the winter 2021 writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa.

In 2017, Stuart won the eighth annual Battle of the Bards, presented by the International Festival of Authors and NOW Magazine. In spring 2023, Stuart received the biggest book award in Ontario, the Trillium Book Prize, for his memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers. In fall 2019, Stuart was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature and literary community. His other awards include the Canadian Jewish Literary Prize for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction. His work has been translated into Russian, French, Spanish, Estonian, Slovene, and Nynorsk.

Stuart is currently working on ten book projects.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOW AVAILABLE!!

Back on earth, some people didn’t have houses. Meanwhile, some houses didn’t have people.

this is a short, spare book, but it is not easily dismissed. even though the white of the pages outweighs the typed-in bits,



those typed-in bits are lovely. for example, on that left-hand page pictured:

In the black-and-white photo taken ten years before I was born, my father and mother look like movie stars. They stand in a field, wind whispering through their hair. The photo whispered in my ear, “See how they smile. See their eyes shine. They have no worries yet, your parents.”

the book is made up of surreal moments, poetically told, and is apparently an homage to a book by toby maclennan - 1 Walked Out Of 2 And Forgot It, a book so obscure that stuart ross is the ONLY person to have reviewed it here on goodreads, and only one of four to have rated it.

it’s lovely stuff - glimpses of scenes that make up a story half-told, half-implied, focusing on themes of death, loss, nostalgia, childhood, and memory, but it’s never lugubrious; it’s haunting, not haunted.

The headstone stood in front of me. It wore rocks on its head. It watched me shift from foot to foot in the cold, watched me jam my hands deep in my pockets. It saw my lips moving and heard sounds come out, but it didn’t understand language. My eyes were red and filled with tears. The headstone just stood there, waiting for me to leave: It’s the same thing every time. He just comes up here and stands right in front of me and his eyes turn red and sounds issue from his mouth. Where are the rocks on his head? Where are the words carved into his chest?

there are plenty of recurring motifs: telephones, ghosts, snow forts, squirrels, spiders, shadows and light, stones, the kennedy assassination, ambulances, and yes - pockets; pockets that are empty, pockets desperately filled with shadows, pockets that hold what is valued. and as a bonus, this book fits in the pocket of a fashionable fleece vest!



it’s full of doppelgängers, and otherwise shifting, fluid identities, creating a pleasantly dissociating vibe. plus, the girl next door is named karen, which is a pretty cool name. it also shifts nicely between the surreal and the decidedly banal:

Across the border, in Vineland, New Jersey, I chased fireflies around on my aunt’s lawn and tried to put them in a jar with holes punched into the tin lid. I looked at them more closely and saw they were tiny ambulances with their lights flashing. My aunt came out to call me for dinner and found me crammed into the jar instead, my curly hair poking up through the breathing holes. “After we eat,” she said, lifting up the jar that held me, “we’ll go to the casino. I go to the casino every Saturday.”

i’m a fan of mr. stuart ross, and this book is just one of the reasons why. here’s hoping that more than four people on here give this one a chance, because even though it is short, it’ll get its hooks in ya. also, the back cover copy promises that Every reading brings a new revelation, which makes it like many books in one!

one more excerpt for the road, on the road:

A boll weevil curled up into a tiny grey ball on the grey curb. It rocked slightly in the warm breeze. A 1966 blue Ford station wagon rolled by. Neither the boll weevil nor the station wagon was aware of the other. A sprinkling of rain began to fall. Soon the entire road looked like it was covered by shadow.

come to my blog!

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh from the last page of this exquisite, poignant poem/novella, let me just tumble out some reactions, like a grateful exhalation. Pockets is a unique meditation on childhood and grief, shifting from dreams and hallucinatory half-dreams to sharpened-pencil-precise memories and images. The shifting continues between childhood and seemingly reluctant adulthood ("I was driving a car, but I can't remember if I was a child or an adult. I reached a hand to my face. It was rough, unshaven. I was an adult.") ... from fleeting happiness to bewildered despair, from love to anger to yearning. Throughout, the title hovers and takes many forms. Pockets are places of safekeeping and secrets withheld, but most strikingly, pockets turned out (like those of a Red Skelton clown) denote everything from poverty to generosity denied to being drained of every last resource. Each segment of these beautiful and sometimes quietly harrowing reflections is bottom justified on the page, and even that gives a sense of a narrator who has perhaps reached rock bottom in reconciling his sorrows. But ... "Then, out of the sky, my mother's hand reached down." So small, Pockets invites you to turn to the beginning and read it again, where new pockets of grace and consolation will be revealed.

[Taryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the early 1960s in the Toronto suburbs. Loss pervades a young man’s life, both in a personal and global sense, but the memories endure.

In the black-and-white photo taken ten years before I was born, my father and mother look like movie stars. They stand in a field, wind whispering through their hair. The photo whispered in my ear, “See how they smile. See their eyes shine. They have no worries yet, your parents.”

This book was way out of my comfort zone! I selected this book knowing I have a difficult time reading prose poetry, but the cover and description intrigued me. In this slim book, each page is a vignette—fragments of emotion and memory. I didn't fully understand the vivid, dreamlike imagery on each page, but every scene evoked a sense of nostalgia and wistfulness in me. Sometimes the surreal descriptions struck me as more realistic than a true-to-life description would've been:

I was not allowed to ride any farther than the stop sign. … My brother snitched. The slam of my father’s footsteps as he strode after me along Pannahill Road was a like a series of meteors hitting the earth. I stood with Marky looking at my new bicycle, and soon my father’s shadow fell over us. His large thumb came down and squashed me into the concrete. Marky examined the smudge on the driveway in front of the triplex he lived in.

I read Pockets four times, and I truly did get something different out of it on each read. A sense of loneliness and melancholy pervades some of the pages: the phone goes unanswered and the young man is continuously refilling his empty pockets. Sometimes the only object in his pockets are rocks to put on headstones. But with all the sadness, there's also hope and brotherhood. The narrator marvels at how everything in the world is connected. He sees himself mirrored in others without anyone having to say a word. The way forward after loss is difficult, but life continues on.

The headstone stood in front of me. It wore rocks on its head. It watched me shift from foot to foot in the cold, watched me jam my hands deep in m pockets. It saw my lips moving and heard sounds come out but it didn’t understand language. My eyes were red and filled with tears. The headstone just stood there waiting for me to leave: It’s the same thing every time. He just comes up here and stands right in front of me and his eyes turn red and sounds issue from his mouth. Where are the rocks on his head? Where are the words carved into his chest?

In the acknowledgments, the author says that this book wouldn't exist without I Walked out of 2 and Forgot It by Toby MacLennan. I'd love to track down a copy of that book someday to see the connections.

Another quote that made an impression on me:

It was impossible, in a ravine, to not walk through spiderwebs. You got web on your face, and spiders and dead flying insects. You screamed and clawed your fingernails across your face. You spat. You tugged at your hair. Meanwhile, just a few meters from you, there might have been a body of some person lying there amid the trees, under the mulch, in a shallow grave, decomposing.

________________

I received this book for free from Netgalley and ECW Press. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It will be available October 3, 2017.

________________

About the tradition of putting rocks on headstones: 

"Flowers are good metaphors for life. Life withers; it fades like a flower. As Isaiah says, 'All flesh is grass, and all its beauty like the flower of the field; grass withers and flowers fade' (Isaiah 40:6-7). For that reason, flowers are an apt symbol of passing.

But the memory is supposed to be lasting. While flowers may be a good metaphor for the brevity of life, stones seem better suited to the permanence of memory. Stones do not die." -Jewish Insights on Death and Mourning edited by Jack Riemer, Sherwin B. Nuland

[Corinne Wasilewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been looking forward to this book and it didn't let me down. Pockets is a eulogy to the past: to beloved family members passed on; childhood friends; the old neighbourhood; the younger self and what will always be home. As the present and past cross paths and sometimes blur into one, Ross empties his pockets to reveal artifacts from an earlier time. These alternate with surreal images that are charged with emotion. Each offering is a pebble placed on a headstone.

This just might be my favourite Stuart Ross work to date. I've read it three times in two days and that's just for starters.

[Kathryn Mockler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book. Beautiful, sad, surreal. Love it!

[Savannah Muron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even thought the book is a fragmented novel, the story is clear and somehow connected. It is the most thought compelling story I've ever read. As it travels through the narrators mind, you can feel just what he's living, and can interpret it just how he does, and it's truly mind blowing. It's as you're actually looking into someone's mind. It's a great story and I highly recommend that one takes the short amount of time it requires to read and immerse yourself into the strange and imaginative world of Stuart Ross.

[Jenny Chinace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable and amazing! This wizardly read comes in at just the right speed. I mean, just when you think Stuart Ross can't any better he one ups you with this latest novel, Pockets! It rocked my pocket man! So cool! I really dug the way he plays with form and as the author wrote on his blog, he said its tops to let writers who are important to you know like how they affected them in a good way, impact-wise, so if this book means as much to you as it does to me, like let the author know on goodreads

[Amanda Banon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This white-haired, spell-casting arch-mage -- a true wizard of the arts of chainsawing manuscripts into form -- had me enchanted with his divination and necromancy from the first surreal, nonsense-driven page. I have heard Ross does readings in one's living room; I would totally go bonkers having him read from his novel in my own home! I highly recommend this novel to anyone who has a tough commute in the morning and seeks refuge in the truly surreal. If he knocks on your door trying to sell you his book well gosh, buy two!

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

in Pockets, as well as in his other work, Stuart Ross has a comedian's timing. He seems to know just when and how to surprise the reader, moving from an expected, ordinary reminiscence to something magical or delightfully absurd. This book is a pocket full of grief, nostalgia for childhood and surprises Inanimate objects come alive in ways i wouldn't have thought would make sense, but do when presented by the author. i found myself smiling a lot as i was reading. the smile wondered why this didn't happen more often.

[January Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different. I enjoyed it. Makes you think. A pleasant read. I wold recommend to others. The writing is very good.

[Prairie Fire Review of Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review from prairiefire.ca

Review by Will Fawley

A seasoned writer of both poetry and fiction, Stuart Ross has melded both forms in Pockets, and has created a brand new experience for fans of both genres.

Though the title of the book is Pockets: A Novel, this book is not a novel in the traditional sense. Do not expect a straightforward plot, character arc, or anything else you’d expect from a traditional novel. If you’re looking for that kind of experience, you will be disappointed. Pockets is more like a collection of prose poems, pushing the definition of “novel” past the popular novel in stories form that has recently been explored by so many writers around the world, including Canadian authors such as Jenny Ferguson in her novel Border Markers.

In the acknowledgements, Ross explains that Toby MacLennan’s 1 Walked Out of 2 and Forgot It was a major inspiration for the novel. That inspiration is clear in the book’s structure, which creates a fragmented, surreal feeling that builds with each page.

The unique format of the novel is its most distinguishing characteristic. It is made up of bite-size moments, memories from an unnamed narrator. Each page is a new one, and most are only a few sentences, pushed to the bottom of the page so the majority of the book is blank space. This may be the evolution of the novel, what might be the next step after the novel in stories trend, but is more likely a structure that works only for rare books like this one.

The question on every reader’s mind when encountering a fragmented novel is, “Are the stories connected?” In the case of Pockets, while the pieces are not directly connected, each passage is a moment where some kind of connection is made. The pieces are untitled, so I will refer to them by page number. On page 8, the narrator sees his parents in bed, and then sneaks out of the house to visit their grave. The passage of time is not realistic, but shuffled by memories, categorized by topic—in this case connected by the category of parents.

On page 9, the narrator remarks, “It is marvellous how everything is connected.” And while the stories themselves aren’t directly connected, there are overlapping themes and characters that come together, allowing the reader to experience fragmented moments of one man’s life.

In another passage, he sees himself, in a sense watching his own memory. In a sense, this is what the whole book is about, each page a pocket of abstracted memory, distorted in its own remembering. “I passed the window of a house, where a small lamp threw light on the face of a boy lying in his bed, looking across the room and out the window. Just before he left my field of vision, I recognized the boy as me, peering out the window at his brother drifting by” (page 33).

The narrator’s brother is always floating through the sky, transient. His mother is perpetually sick. There is a dreamlike chronology from one page to the next, and even within each section. “Stevie pushed his pockets back into his pants, wiped the back of one hand across his nostrils, and disappeared from view. Soon his front door opened. He appeared on the porch. Then he was on the roof. Then he stepped out of his open garage” (Page 13).

Amid this surrealism, the pieces are grounded by pop culture and historical references, movies and TV shows, and current events—from Lawrence Welk to Kennedy’s assassination and World War II. The most realistic aspect of the novel is not in these references, however, but in the realness of the emotions it stirs. Many of the larger and weightier passages in the book focus on the trauma of the unnamed narrator losing his brother and mother.

Through these fragments of a life, Ross gives us snapshots of surreal moments, memories distorted by time and overwhelmed by emotion. And throughout these memories we begin to form a complete picture, we grasp something intangible that isn’t a traditional novel, but more of a feeling, an experience. And that transfer of experience and emotion is the function of all great novels. Pockets pioneers a new novel form, giving readers the opportunity to become the protagonist, to know what it feels like to be the singular person that is the culmination of all these moments and memories stacked on top of each other, each one distorted by the last.

[Line Dufour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aesthetically I appreciated the varied layout of the text, with some pages featuring only a single sentence, others containing several lines or half a page of text, while a few were three-quarters occupied. Each page’s text conjured distinct images in my mind’s eye which I projected onto the empty spaces on the page. In that sense it sometimes felt like i was looking through an old family album. The anthropomorphization of objects like houses, combined with a blending of childhood memories and fantasy elements, created a dreamlike quality that was both whimsical and haunting. At times it felt like i had stepped into a surrealistic painting perhaps by Dali. The overlapping or repetition of words, phrases, characters, and imagery added cohesion to the narrative.

I felt that sad events were rendered in a delicate and guileless manner, making it a very refreshing take on the serious events that take place in our lives.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving novel(la) of memories both good and bad, accurate and exaggerated, magical and sobering. With prose poem-like blocks at the bottom of each page, it's as if Ross is reaching deep into his pockets and retrieving pieces of the past like stones to skip in a creek.

[Meaghan Steeves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just not my cup of tea. Happens.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably wouldn't have read this except that it was local. I enjoyed it on a snowy afternoon.

[Michael Casteels · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second time reading this delightful little novel. On this reading I was quite struck by how grief can skew and alter the perception of time. In one scene the narrator peeks into his parent’s bedroom to see them lying in bed, watching a show on television. He then leaves the house and walks to the cemetery, where he places a rock on their tombstone. It writing makes the span of years, the loss of both parents, happen seamlessly, so the grief has always existed, the parents are always lost, but they are simultaneously always there, watching television in their room.

[Cal · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars love the hitchhikers guide ambiance and the half pages, the pages riddled with symbolism and half fed metaphors. great read. similar to : hitchhikers guide to the galaxy by douglas adams and the embalmer by anne rene caille

[Emilie Szreter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Une poésie touchante, pleine d’absence et de peine. On essaie de remplir ses poches, vides comme les pages