There must have been a time when Robertson Davies, the grand old man of Canadian literature (so very grand and old that he is in fact deceased) was a dazzling young novelist who spoke to the hearts of a new generation. That time is now remembered only in legend, but Canadians continue to look to their grand old authors - Davies, Margaret Laurence and the rest - for their bedtime reading. What a relief to find new writers as good as Struan Sinclair, whose collection of short stories refuses to draw strength from tradition.
Everything Breathed is a genuinely exciting book, a book that promises riches. More, perhaps, than it can quite deliver - but those promises keep you re-reading the best stories, discovering new vistas, new angles of interest.
Sinclair's 10 stories circle around peculiarly isolated people. Their relationships are powerful but single-minded, developing in neighbourhoods without neighbours. In the first and strongest story, Triage, a younger son bleakly relates the death of his brother, an alcoholic at 13. In another, a man drives through the snowy night looking for his semi-senile relative. It could be claustrophobic, but Sinclair is a skilful enough writer to capture the intense melancholy and exhilaration of being alone in one's head. This contradiction - of loving, being loved and yet being essentially solitary - is the source of the stories' power. "Everything breathed is shared," thinks Alex as he leafs through an air purification system brochure. The idea at once repels and fascinates him.
Unfortunately Sinclair, a playwright, is often reluctant to let his struggling narrators tell their stories unaided. It is a shame: his introduction of some self-consciously literary devices can be awkward, breaking the spell. The history of an ancestor's gift box, never opened, runs parallel to the story of a lifeless affair started by a nameless expatriate while nursing a feverish partner. Why? The affair is gripping, but the box is distracting (why did no one open it?). In Mountain Man, a woman at a misogynist's dinner party recalls an adultery she witnessed as a child. The naive voice of the 11-year-old cannot compete with that of the bitter adult, and weakens the story. I hope that Struan Sinclair, in his next book (a novel, apparently), has the courage of his convictions and lets his troubled souls stand alone.
