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Two-Man Tent
In Two-Man Tent, one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, Robert Chafe, offers his long-awaited collection of short fiction. The individual stories are thematically linked by an interwoven, recurring tale of a long-distance relationship told in the form of text messages, chat sessions, and emails, as Chafe bring his singular talent for dialogue and scripting to work within new forms of communication. The results are stunning in an absorbing and thoroughly contemporary collection that reads like no other.
- GenresContemporary
180 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 25, 2016
25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 7, 2022
There was a scene in one of the stories where a woman saws through the neck of a moose that has been hit by a car to put it out of its mysery. At the time, this mirrored my feelings about the book (maybe this sounds a bit harsh - and no disrespect to the author, he's an accomplished playwright - no it definitely sounds harsh, lol, sorry.) but I just wished that collection would have been put to rest and ended.
I don't usually write negative reviews of living authors but...
The spine of the book was a doomed relationship via text messages (and some microscopic screen grabs of emails), which I understand was edited, but I couldn't help but cringe throughout. I've wondered about what it might be like to see this type of real life-to-paper before, it's obviously been done, in a way, with infinite collections of correspondence i.e. letters before. Perhaps innovative, it just didn't work here for me. If you read it and enjoy it, more power to you.
I will say that the last story, "The Pigeon Caves" met a satisfying balance for me, but overall, I just can't get behind the overwhelming praise I've seen for this book.
I don't usually write negative reviews of living authors but...
The spine of the book was a doomed relationship via text messages (and some microscopic screen grabs of emails), which I understand was edited, but I couldn't help but cringe throughout. I've wondered about what it might be like to see this type of real life-to-paper before, it's obviously been done, in a way, with infinite collections of correspondence i.e. letters before. Perhaps innovative, it just didn't work here for me. If you read it and enjoy it, more power to you.
I will say that the last story, "The Pigeon Caves" met a satisfying balance for me, but overall, I just can't get behind the overwhelming praise I've seen for this book.
Read
May 8, 2021Another of many books about which I feel upon first finishing it that I need to read it again before I can say anything intelligent about it. It passes several of my personal crucial tests, while at the same time leaving me unsettled about the effect of the whole. Definitely going back to it.
July 29, 2023
I bought this at The Rooms the last time we were in St. John’s (2019). Chafe is a Newfoundland author I didn’t know. He is primarily a playwright, and he is openly gay. Many, but not all, of the stories in this collection revolve around a gay character or characters. Chafe is a realist who writes about contemporary Newfoundland. In this volume, he does not take recourse Newfoundland myth and history, but is very much focused on the here and now. Recently, I read Lisa Moore’s collection "Degrees of Nakedness"; those stories are tight and complexly structured. She gets the most out of the words she uses to produce thickly layered stories. Robert Chafe is not as effective of a stylist. Too many of the stories seemed like drafts, but there are a few that are quite well realized. And there is one story, divided into four sections and spread throughout the volume, which I initially did not like at all but came around to by its end: a fascinating and unexpected reassessment on my part.
I’ll just speak to the stories I found most satisfying.
The story for which the volume is named develops arcs of family loss and dissolution that are woven together by the (in)ability of the parents, particularly the father, to speak of them. In a family of four, the elder son died tragically in a car accident years earlier, while in the current moment of the story the younger son, who is the story’s focal point, is heading off island, most likely permanently, for college. In response to the pain of loss of their older son, the parents have never addressed his death, and they stopped going on camping vacations, a favorite family pastime. Both parents’ reactions unravel the coherence of family life, leaving the younger son at a loss to make sense of how his family has almost flat-lined. His departure from Newfoundland would resolve, or at least draw the curtain on, years of incomprehension. But to commemorate his son’s departure, the father decides to resurrect the camping trip, this time for father and son, and digs out the family tent buried deep in the garage. The manifested tent does its job, and despite the camping trip not coming off events lead the father to finally speak of his son’s death. Chafe makes effective use of the “two man tent” as metaphor to both structure and bring the story to a close. When father and son return home after the failed trip, the son out of frustration sets up the tent in the backyard, noting that although it is a four person tent it is only big enough to fit two comfortably. Chafe uses the tent to signify the reduced circumstances (emotionally, etc.) of the family as well as to reinforce the son’s impending departure.
Metaphor also plays a part in the story “Totalled.” This time the metaphor is a moose. Newfoundland has too many moose. It is an invasive species, introduced in the 19th C for the sake of sport hunting, and it has no natural predators. Moose-car collisions are numerous and often deadly for both humans and moose. The story is set in western Newfoundland, where the moose population is thickest. The key event of the story is a car accident late at night. Three of the four passengers are interns at a marine science institute, and the fourth is the love interest of one of the interns, the story’s main character. The other two in the car, a man and woman, are also romantically linked. They are all returning home after a night of drinking when they hit the female moose. While none of the people die or are even much hurt, the moose is severely injured. Chafe describes the moose’s injuries and suffering in great detail, and how the four characters react to it impels the story. After the initial chaos, the hetero couple are simply traumatized by the event; the man, who attempt to take some action, is overcome by frustration, anger, and shock. The love interest takes off up the road to look for help at the last campground they passed, leaving the main character to deal with the suffering and dying moose. Often in Newfoundland literature, a character’s know-how and problem-solving skills will be tested by an extraordinary threat (a sinking ship, extreme weather). Here, only the main character has the emotional and physical strength to face the moose and free it from its misery. The moose is the measure of the man, metaphor for the human capacity to face danger. I can’t help think that Chafe is being ironic. Still,, the moose accident does seem to be the contemporary equivalent of the shipwrecks of the past.
The four parts of “Woof” are split across the volume, which is an interesting strategy and worked well for me, because I needed to assess and the reassess each section as I read it to appreciate what Chafe’s is doing overall with the story. The story is about the rise and decline of a long distance relationship (Newfoundland/California) primarily over social media and email. I found the format of the story (instant messaging, phone messages, email) annoying, because I thought that the terse communications of IM etc. undercut the potential for story. I was also annoyed by he first two sections and some of the third because it was all flirtation with little to no sense of coherent plot or character development. Between the airy flirtations and the fragmentary structure of the various postings, I was ready not to even bother with the fourth section. But by the end of the third section, they have decided to meet in DC: Hope for coherent conversation, character and plot development! But Chafe does not narrate the DC trip. The fourth section occurs after their successful meet-up in DC, and the formats are the same as the other three sections. The difference is that the two are now assessing their experiences and feelings of a common experience. Coherence! Plus, the story becomes meta. The Newfoundland character is a writer, Chafe, who is putting together a volume of short stories and wants to use their IM etc. exchanges as the basis for a story. The California partner is fine with that, but as the writer reviews the transcripts he begins to ask probing questions to get a deeper understanding of his partner and their relationship, but their exchanges become tense and difficult, which then leads to the end of the relationship. In the end, there is clear plot and character development, and the story finishes in a way that I wasn’t expecting. I then ended up reassessing the earlier sections, because I understood better how they fit the plot and that my readerly annoyance was integral to plot development. Nicely done.
I like a couple of other stories–”Pigeon Caves” and “A Mandatory Evacuation”--because of the intriguing way that Chafe organizes them to explore death, love, and loss. It is a worthwhile volume to check out, but the stories are of varying quality.
I’ll just speak to the stories I found most satisfying.
The story for which the volume is named develops arcs of family loss and dissolution that are woven together by the (in)ability of the parents, particularly the father, to speak of them. In a family of four, the elder son died tragically in a car accident years earlier, while in the current moment of the story the younger son, who is the story’s focal point, is heading off island, most likely permanently, for college. In response to the pain of loss of their older son, the parents have never addressed his death, and they stopped going on camping vacations, a favorite family pastime. Both parents’ reactions unravel the coherence of family life, leaving the younger son at a loss to make sense of how his family has almost flat-lined. His departure from Newfoundland would resolve, or at least draw the curtain on, years of incomprehension. But to commemorate his son’s departure, the father decides to resurrect the camping trip, this time for father and son, and digs out the family tent buried deep in the garage. The manifested tent does its job, and despite the camping trip not coming off events lead the father to finally speak of his son’s death. Chafe makes effective use of the “two man tent” as metaphor to both structure and bring the story to a close. When father and son return home after the failed trip, the son out of frustration sets up the tent in the backyard, noting that although it is a four person tent it is only big enough to fit two comfortably. Chafe uses the tent to signify the reduced circumstances (emotionally, etc.) of the family as well as to reinforce the son’s impending departure.
Metaphor also plays a part in the story “Totalled.” This time the metaphor is a moose. Newfoundland has too many moose. It is an invasive species, introduced in the 19th C for the sake of sport hunting, and it has no natural predators. Moose-car collisions are numerous and often deadly for both humans and moose. The story is set in western Newfoundland, where the moose population is thickest. The key event of the story is a car accident late at night. Three of the four passengers are interns at a marine science institute, and the fourth is the love interest of one of the interns, the story’s main character. The other two in the car, a man and woman, are also romantically linked. They are all returning home after a night of drinking when they hit the female moose. While none of the people die or are even much hurt, the moose is severely injured. Chafe describes the moose’s injuries and suffering in great detail, and how the four characters react to it impels the story. After the initial chaos, the hetero couple are simply traumatized by the event; the man, who attempt to take some action, is overcome by frustration, anger, and shock. The love interest takes off up the road to look for help at the last campground they passed, leaving the main character to deal with the suffering and dying moose. Often in Newfoundland literature, a character’s know-how and problem-solving skills will be tested by an extraordinary threat (a sinking ship, extreme weather). Here, only the main character has the emotional and physical strength to face the moose and free it from its misery. The moose is the measure of the man, metaphor for the human capacity to face danger. I can’t help think that Chafe is being ironic. Still,, the moose accident does seem to be the contemporary equivalent of the shipwrecks of the past.
The four parts of “Woof” are split across the volume, which is an interesting strategy and worked well for me, because I needed to assess and the reassess each section as I read it to appreciate what Chafe’s is doing overall with the story. The story is about the rise and decline of a long distance relationship (Newfoundland/California) primarily over social media and email. I found the format of the story (instant messaging, phone messages, email) annoying, because I thought that the terse communications of IM etc. undercut the potential for story. I was also annoyed by he first two sections and some of the third because it was all flirtation with little to no sense of coherent plot or character development. Between the airy flirtations and the fragmentary structure of the various postings, I was ready not to even bother with the fourth section. But by the end of the third section, they have decided to meet in DC: Hope for coherent conversation, character and plot development! But Chafe does not narrate the DC trip. The fourth section occurs after their successful meet-up in DC, and the formats are the same as the other three sections. The difference is that the two are now assessing their experiences and feelings of a common experience. Coherence! Plus, the story becomes meta. The Newfoundland character is a writer, Chafe, who is putting together a volume of short stories and wants to use their IM etc. exchanges as the basis for a story. The California partner is fine with that, but as the writer reviews the transcripts he begins to ask probing questions to get a deeper understanding of his partner and their relationship, but their exchanges become tense and difficult, which then leads to the end of the relationship. In the end, there is clear plot and character development, and the story finishes in a way that I wasn’t expecting. I then ended up reassessing the earlier sections, because I understood better how they fit the plot and that my readerly annoyance was integral to plot development. Nicely done.
I like a couple of other stories–”Pigeon Caves” and “A Mandatory Evacuation”--because of the intriguing way that Chafe organizes them to explore death, love, and loss. It is a worthwhile volume to check out, but the stories are of varying quality.
July 18, 2019
Some of the best short stories I've read in a while. Chafe weaves an excellent meditation on love, desire, and the need for affection. Each story is totally different, some more experimental than others. As a lover of epistolary novels, the central thread was compelling and tied the book together well.
January 17, 2026
This collection was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I found the recurring Wolf stories to be a little overtly boring, often dragging the pace of the book down. There is some strong imagery and an interesting metaphor involving a moose that provided a much-needed highlight and thematic depth.
The last story was decent and ended the book on a relatively high note I guess, but overall, the impact was fleeting. I know none of these stories will stay with me for very long.
The last story was decent and ended the book on a relatively high note I guess, but overall, the impact was fleeting. I know none of these stories will stay with me for very long.
November 4, 2019
Really impressed with this collection. The stories are visceral, poetic and absorbing. Sympathetic characters navigating a harsh world. Moments that will stay with you long after you finish reading. Highly recommend.
December 23, 2016
Short stories.
October 13, 2022
I ripped through these stories in a day-and-a-half, and each one lingered. Well worth a read.
February 3, 2017
Some very powerful 5-star writing in some of these stories but I wasn't sufficiently wowed overall to inspire a higher rating for the collection as a whole. That said, I'll be curious to look into more of this author's work.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews