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Best Canadian Stories 2020
“The right story, at the right time, if you happen to be open to it … can perhaps move you so far outside of yourself that you will not consider going back.” “Like meeting a stranger, much of the pleasure of a story is its unknown power,” writes Best Canadian Stories 2020 guest editor Paige Cooper. “The right story, at the right time, if you happen to be open to it … can perhaps move you so far outside of yourself that you will not consider going back.” From Festival du Voyageur to the shores of Lake Erie, Tbilisi to Toronto, the Amisk River to a hotel-turned-hospital in the midst of a mysterious pandemic, this wide-ranging anthology brings together the real and the speculative, small towns and big cities, grief and humour, introducing readers to stories that startle us into new understanding―of ourselves and each other, the worlds we inhabit and the ones they help us to imagine. Featuring work by: Maxime Raymond Bock • Lynn Coady • Kristyn Dunnion • Omar El Akkad • Camilla Grudova • Conor Kerr • Alex Leslie • Thea Lim • Madeleine Maillet • Cassidy McFadzean • Michael Melgaard • Jeff Noh • Casey Plett • Eden Robinson • Naben Ruthnum • Pablo Strauss • Souvankham Thammavongsa
- GenresShort StoriesCanada
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2020
4 people are currently reading
15 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 1, 2024
Similar to my review of the 2023 version, this was not great. The stories that stood out to me were:
- Mother Tongue, by Madeleine Maillet. This one was weirdly interesting. It's about motherhood. The narrator deals with some of her young daughter's strange behavior, in light of her own mother's recent death.
- The Last Big Dance, by Conor Kerr. Prohibition era in northern Alberta. The narrator lives with her grandma, where she and her trigger-loose uncle fight to keep their still hidden from "dem mounties". Super fun read.
- Mother Tongue, by Madeleine Maillet. This one was weirdly interesting. It's about motherhood. The narrator deals with some of her young daughter's strange behavior, in light of her own mother's recent death.
- The Last Big Dance, by Conor Kerr. Prohibition era in northern Alberta. The narrator lives with her grandma, where she and her trigger-loose uncle fight to keep their still hidden from "dem mounties". Super fun read.
November 25, 2020
One thing Best Canadian Stories 2020 will demonstrate to U.S. readers is that, far from being Minnesotans by other means (mid-western self-deprecation and modesty writ large), Canadians are cosmopolitan—comfortably so, scattered among the world’s continents—and emigré and sexually broad-minded. There are fantasy stories here, disturbingly real; ones concerning the banality of evil; systemic racism, Canadian style; and more, across 16 stories—a good way to eat away half a month if you read but one story a day. Here are my summaries of some of those stories:
“The Gas Station,” by Souvankham Thammavongsa, is about a mid-30s single travelling CPA who a meets a gas station attendant in one town she’s temporarily housed in, an attendant whose primary talent seems to leave women devastated by his love. And speaking of love, there’s “Common Whipping” by Naben Ruthnum, about a movie composer whose fetish for extreme S&M (as the catcher, not pitcher) accounts for his success as a sensitive composer who gets pain right. (John Williams, we hardly knew ye. . .)
Canada’s First Peoples get a voice in “Your Random Spirit Guide” and “The Last Big Dance.” From “Your Random Spirit Guide” by Eden Robinson (think Kathy Y. Wilson’s Your Negro Tour Guide [ISBN-13: 978-1578601431], with similar attitude): "My Haisla and Heiltsuk ancestors would never come to you in a dream. They have super stressful afterlives watching over their great-grandchildren as they make unfortunate dating choices at the All-Native Basketball Tournament or decide to put their lustrous, black hair in un-Indian man buns."
Conor Kerr’s “The Last Big Dance” takes place circa WWII and the early years following. The narrator is sent at age 11 to live with her grandmother, a moonshiner located somewhere in rural Ottawa on government-relocation grounds for First Nations people. The story involves bigoted and violent Mounties and Uncle Jim, the narrator’s uncle, a war veteran and drunk. Bigots, drunks, guns, and law enforcement: Some stories write themselves (in a good, not predictable, way).
Canada has a large immigrant community, many coming from oppressive regimes. In Michael Melgaard’s “Drago,” the narrator, Matt, describes working for a used bookstore / porn-DVD shop). One of his regulars, a mysterious guy with an accent and the occasional violent outburst, might just have one of Milosevic’s thugs in the Yugoslav’s People’s Army, wanted for the murder of people sheltering in a building that was set on fire, the escapees from which were immediately shot. But who knows? Lots of Serbs who came to Canada are named Drago.
Other immigrants, however, come as people from formerly colonized nations. In Jeff Noh’s “Jikji,” the Korean-born narrator connects Korean history to French imperialism—and the reasons he is studying in Quebec a document housed in Paris. The document is Jikji, a Zen Buddhist document printed in the 1360s, nearly 80 years before Gutenberg.
Maxime Raymond Bock’s “Beneath the Ruins” is a joy of storytelling well done. It’s a Twilight-Zone-ish tale in which the mundane, everyday world suddenly transforms into a horrifying, unescapable new reality with no way back. Bock does a great job of structuring and describing the story to take the reader from unease to claustrophobia to nightmare.
“The Gas Station,” by Souvankham Thammavongsa, is about a mid-30s single travelling CPA who a meets a gas station attendant in one town she’s temporarily housed in, an attendant whose primary talent seems to leave women devastated by his love. And speaking of love, there’s “Common Whipping” by Naben Ruthnum, about a movie composer whose fetish for extreme S&M (as the catcher, not pitcher) accounts for his success as a sensitive composer who gets pain right. (John Williams, we hardly knew ye. . .)
Canada’s First Peoples get a voice in “Your Random Spirit Guide” and “The Last Big Dance.” From “Your Random Spirit Guide” by Eden Robinson (think Kathy Y. Wilson’s Your Negro Tour Guide [ISBN-13: 978-1578601431], with similar attitude): "My Haisla and Heiltsuk ancestors would never come to you in a dream. They have super stressful afterlives watching over their great-grandchildren as they make unfortunate dating choices at the All-Native Basketball Tournament or decide to put their lustrous, black hair in un-Indian man buns."
Conor Kerr’s “The Last Big Dance” takes place circa WWII and the early years following. The narrator is sent at age 11 to live with her grandmother, a moonshiner located somewhere in rural Ottawa on government-relocation grounds for First Nations people. The story involves bigoted and violent Mounties and Uncle Jim, the narrator’s uncle, a war veteran and drunk. Bigots, drunks, guns, and law enforcement: Some stories write themselves (in a good, not predictable, way).
Canada has a large immigrant community, many coming from oppressive regimes. In Michael Melgaard’s “Drago,” the narrator, Matt, describes working for a used bookstore / porn-DVD shop). One of his regulars, a mysterious guy with an accent and the occasional violent outburst, might just have one of Milosevic’s thugs in the Yugoslav’s People’s Army, wanted for the murder of people sheltering in a building that was set on fire, the escapees from which were immediately shot. But who knows? Lots of Serbs who came to Canada are named Drago.
Other immigrants, however, come as people from formerly colonized nations. In Jeff Noh’s “Jikji,” the Korean-born narrator connects Korean history to French imperialism—and the reasons he is studying in Quebec a document housed in Paris. The document is Jikji, a Zen Buddhist document printed in the 1360s, nearly 80 years before Gutenberg.
Maxime Raymond Bock’s “Beneath the Ruins” is a joy of storytelling well done. It’s a Twilight-Zone-ish tale in which the mundane, everyday world suddenly transforms into a horrifying, unescapable new reality with no way back. Bock does a great job of structuring and describing the story to take the reader from unease to claustrophobia to nightmare.
June 28, 2022
Quite a few great ones in this!
My favourites were:
Hazel & Christopher by Casey Plett
Drago by Michael Melgaard
Mother Tongue by Madeleine Maillet
If You Start Breathing by Thea Lim (shoutout to my ex-prof!!!! no bias at play—this story is terrific!!)
Daughter of Cups by Kristyn Dunnion
The Drain by Lynn Coady
My favourites were:
Hazel & Christopher by Casey Plett
Drago by Michael Melgaard
Mother Tongue by Madeleine Maillet
If You Start Breathing by Thea Lim (shoutout to my ex-prof!!!! no bias at play—this story is terrific!!)
Daughter of Cups by Kristyn Dunnion
The Drain by Lynn Coady
April 13, 2021
Always enjoy short stories, and love the Canadian collection. Good for putting down, and picking up again to start anew.
August 13, 2023
'Hazel and Christopher' by Casey Plett 11/10
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews