Reading a collection of short stories vaults a reader from one scene to the next and with it one emotion to another. It can be disconcerting for a reader but that is not necessarily a bad thing. If a reader is open to emphasizing with the protagonists in the stories, then the collection can be a personal enlightenment for the reader. And My White Planet by Mark Anthony Jarman is a great collection of short stories for doing just that.

http://tinyurl.com/z3alrb3 ( )

Reading this collection of short stories was a unique experience for me. The writing is excellent, and it is the writing, more than the characters or the plot that carries the stories. And carries them well.
I can compare reading these stories to visiting an art gallery -- the paintings (and in this case, the words) draw out emotions and perspectives. Every paragraph in this collection made me feel something.

But this isn't just finely crafted sentences. There are stories here, about people struggling to make sense of those around them and looking for meaning in life.

I would definitely read more by this author. ( )

This is quite a collection. On finishing it, I had to wonder why Jarman isn't better known.

The answers to that are obvious. First, he writes short stories, which many people view as a training ground for beginning novelists rather than a serious discipline in its own right, and so he doesn't get wide exposure. Second, he's at odds with the conventional "Canadian short story," which is realist and character-driven -- see Munro, Alice. (Not that I have anything against Munro, Alice.)

But Jarman is so, so good. His prose crackles. Jarman lives at the level of the sentence, and often seems more concerned with sentences than with plot or character, and the results are remarkable.

Furthermore, he's drop-dead funny. "Fables of the Deconstruction," in which a professor struggles to interpret the intentions of a student who removes her bra from under her shirt, is not only drop-dead accurate but hilarious. "If Derrida didn't exist, we'd have to invent him," she remarks, borrowing from Voltaire, "and then beat him up at recess."

Highly recommended.