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Vigna is an exciting writer
Book Review
By Derryll White
Vigna, John (2013). Bull Head.
I have always liked short story collections, especially from emerging writers. I think the form gives a writer an opportunity to try things out, play with character and place without committing to a full-blown effort. The result is often super-energized, sometimes chaotic but, when the reader is lucky, an exciting way to explore a new talent. One of the best I have read in a long time is Nancy Lee’s Dead Girls. When I noticed that John Vigna was married to her, my hopes instantly rose – just maybe fine writing by osmosis!
The first story, ‘Two-Step,’ grabbed my attention. I know people like the characters Hammy and Earl. “This is real life I am reading,” I thought. We are relentlessly hard on each other without ever even seeing our oppression. The bare-knuckles, straight language of the story made me stop and think – about myself, my distant past, about those road warriors and comfortable women who once shared my life in a different universe.
The second story, ‘Short Haul,’ placed me firmly in the East Kootenay with many characters I know. It is, for me, a fierce story of loneliness and confusion in the midst of a relationship. How can one be in a committed relationship and all alone? It’s easy! From Canal Flats through Fernie, more than the geography is real for me here. John Vigna is an exciting writer.
It’s a hard place we live in, East Kootenay – beautiful, shining, but hard. And once you peel down through the layers of professional people and merchants, newbies and dilettantes, the people are hard as well. Roots go deep here and change does not come easily. I remember the letters in The Free Press from men who were leaving the old coal town – new ski town, of Fernie for the more real atmosphere of Elkford and Corbin. They chose not to live with the change, with the shift from land and natural resources to exploitation and dollars.
John Vigna catches that drama, that change, exquisitely in these stories. They aren’t nice, not pretty, but they are real, honest and very clear. The characters are unyielding and the circumstances may not be understandable to many. But for me these stories are as powerful as any motorcycle I ever rode, as soft and tender as the best of the women who have graced my life. I suggest you try this collection.
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Excerpts from the book:
PLACE – He drives east along the Crow, built on the dry bed of the Elk River, cutting through the once sacred land of the Kootenai. Narrow valley bottoms crowded by the granite billows of sharp mountains. The sun drops off the horizon behind him, casts shadows over the eastern hills. These mountains are his home.
BACHELOR REALITY – Neither of them [80+ years old] had driven a vehicle other than their tractor. Their ranch was blessed with streams and wooded groves and some of the valley’s best grass for livestock; horse got them everywhere they needed to go.
“Best if you take her [the truck] back with you.” Harold’s teeth were blackened with bits of cookie. “If it’s got tits or wheels, she’ll give us trouble. No use for her here.”
PLACE – He loved in horses what he loved in the land, muscular and flawed, graceful yet brutal. The grass thrashed softly.
CHANGE – They’d clutch their guide books and ask him about the upside-down mountain and then take pictures of his hand-chopped firewood, cords of it stacked in a convoluted system of woodsheds and lean-tos. Sonny planned to scowl when they pointed their cameras at him and Bacon Face [the dog], chase them away with his axe, shout like some wild man, laughing when he turned and walked back home, the axe across his shoulder. The novelty of it. Some people had no sense of place.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
