In the first story of his debut collection, Vancouver poet, playwright, and screenwriter Aaron Bushkowsky writes, “I’m working on my first book. Right now. Writing and holding my breath.” This, along with the fact that all the stories follow
the same love-troubled, self-doubting, soul-searching Canadian writer through many stages of his adult life, might make a reader raise an eyebrow at the book’s fiction label.

On top of being self-referential, the stories make use of countless flashbacks and are told in the (often syrupy) nostalgic language of many memoirs. This structure can make for a form rich with metafictional contemplation, but it comes here at the cost of compelling content.

By self-consciously writing from a writer’s point of view, Bushkowsky is not only telling stories but telling stories about storytelling and memory. In the first paragraph of “Yuma,” the narrator is troubled about what to title the story. He finally settles on the name of the place from where his road-tripping parents phone him, and his hesitation serves to mirror his uncertainty about how to define them emotionally within his life. But since the story is told through a patchwork of scattered memories and first-person commentaries from an indeterminate present, the reader hears a dozen different mini-stories without ever fully being allowed to care about one.

At one point in “A Fishing Story,” about his tough-love relationship with his father, the narrator says, “In a way, this story may be just another exaggeration. Lines may have multiplied. It’s sometimes hard to separate what was said and what I believe was said.” The conundrum is reminiscent of the recent film Big Fish, but the difference is that in Tim Burton’s movie, the stories are in fact unbelievably tall tales while most of these remain commonplace, both in incident and language.

There are a couple of exceptions. In one story, a crazy grandfather literally chops off the top of the house he’s moving when it doesn’t fit underneath the electrical wires, while “Careful” tells a sexy tale of intrigue about a student who exacts revenge on the narrator. Bushkowsky’s dialogue is spot-on and works to develop not only character, but also conflict and tension in the story. Unfortunately that story is not enough to save the collection.