Once You Break A Knuckle

There's something about the troubled landscape in D W Wilson's short stories that remind me of the moments in Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon and his rough-round-the-edges friends work hard, play hard then argue. There's a bonhomie in their shared experiences. For the record, Good Will Hunting is one of my favourite films. And I like this collection a lot.

D W Wilson sets these stories in rural parts of Canada. British Columbia is a looming fury of weather, cold and solitude. Men are men and thus they don't communicate except with their fists and at the bottom of shot glasses of whisky. It's not a book dripping in testosterone, per se, it's a book that revels in its ability to capture the mind of the rural male.

The opening story, where a son and a father compete in a martial arts tournament aches for the moment where they say to each other what they really feel. But this is real life and so they talk through their fists and one struggles for the other's respect, while the other wants to toughen the one up. (Incidentally, is John Crease supposed to be John Crease from The Karate Kid?) Later, two victims of bullying accidentally cause a death and deal with its consequences. Abandoned sons and fathers are often present. The stories are often about good people doing bad things to other good people. The dialogue is terse and curt and the landscape is, as described, bleak.

The best evidence of Wilson's writing prowess is in the BBC National Short Story Award-winning 'The Dead Roads', which describes a friendship group and road trip with a mixture of tenderness and intensity, and that is where Wilson carves out his niche. He can work that balance well. It's a solid collection from a writer we can't wait to watch grow.