Men and the Drink by Julie McArthur
Black Bile’s One-off Chapbook Series 3
Black Bile Press, 16pp, $5.00 (CAN)

Review by Mark McCawley

In her second published story, "Men and the Drink", Humber School alumna Julie McArthur has written a unique story of one woman's dealings with all the men in her life. What makes this story so unique, though, is how McArthur abandons traditional narrative to develop her protagonist - instead relying upon the relationships, themselves, with the various men in her protagonist's life to describe her character.

Whether it's her relationship with a distant father on a road trip, or a co-dependant relationship with her lover, or a friendship with an aging widower -- who she really is changes to suit the man she happens to be with at the time. For her father, she's constantly the little girl attempting to please. For her lover, she is the exact opposite - vixen. For the aging widower, she participates in his weekly fantasy reenactment becoming a replacement for his dead wife over lunch - seeing the meal for something more than what it actually is.

Returning from the road trip with her father, she learns of her lover's infidelity which thrusts her into a fit of alcohol-fuelled anger and confusion:

"I want to throw all his shit out the window, but I'll never be one of those girls. I drink gin I'd hid in the freezer and pass out on the couch.
I wake to the turning key.
"Hi baby. When did you get back?" He smiles.
"I can't believe you slept with her."
"Who?"
"Andrea, you stupid fuck!" I yell, sitting up.
Now I want to throw the bottle at his head, but I'm not that kind of girl either." (p. 13)

Indeed, Julie McArthur is a writer to watch. If only to see where her unconventional approach takes her fiction next.


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Men and the Drink by Julie McArthur is part of the Black Bile Press One-offs Chapbooks Series Three (also featuring Tony O’Neill and Nathaniel George Moore).

Order all three books for only $10.00 (plus $2.00 postage), for a ridiculously good final price of $12.00 for all three books. Or order one chapbook (please specify the title) for $6.00 ($5.00 for the book, plus $1.00 postage). US orders, the same price applies, as the exchange rate to Canadian currency will cover the higher postal costs. UK and RoW orders, please email firth@istar.ca for the price in your currency.

Order by sending a cheque (made payable to M. Firth) to:

Matthew Firth
Black Bile Press
573 Gainsborough Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 2Y6 CANADA
http://ardentdreams.com/bbp/home.html

Queries: firth@istar.ca

Sensational Sherri by Nathaniel G. Moore
Black Bile’s One-off Chapbook Series 3
Black Bile Press, 20pp, $5.00 (CAN)

Reviewed by Mark McCawley

In "Sensational Sherri" Nathaniel G. Moore -- Toronto based poet, short fiction writer, cultural activist, and editor of the online cultural magazine Critical Crushes -- has written a transgressive, allegorical home-movie-like story of lust, booze, violence, nostalgia, pornography and obsession. In the story, we follow a thirtysomething Ricky Galore, a down and out ex-backyard wrestler in the throes of mediocrity on the verge of tapping out:

"When you tap out, you give up. That's what it is called: tapping out, he's tapping out, he just tapped out, surrendering, quitting: he had been giving up each night since the last time he saw Sherri.
Tapping out, counted out, whatever it took to go back through the little curtain backstage, feeling like a total piece of shit."

By using the media of Wrestling as a virtual substructure for the ongoing relationship between Ricky and Sherri - beautiful, young and sought after - Moore has fashioned a Baudrillardean hyperreality whereby the real and the simulated are as interchangable as the profession wrestlers on pay per view -- performances with predetermined outcomes between wrestlers with fictional personalities portrayed as real:

"Everything was fake and did fake things; small moths moved, chomped ice, hot breathing burbled nouns and the go-to: I know . . . I know! I know! trademarked after each utterance TM TM TM, and totally or tots."

In "Sensational Sherri" Moore returns to this motif again and again, Ricky and Sherri's torrid and torrential relationship, just another wrestling storyline swerving swerving day to day, hour to hour. The most detrimental swerve begins, though, when Ricky asks Sherri about her sexual fantasies.

"He was, in fact, booking himself out of their program. A program is a series of matches that assist in telling a story between (usually) two competitors. The program can last anywhere from six weeks to six months depending on the intensity of their encounters."

As their program neared it's numb conclusion to make way for new talent, Sherri had countered Ricky's "But I love eating your pussy," with "But you can eat other pussies." Ricky knew he would be replaced by a much younger, much fitter and hungrier competitor. One she'd bring home to her parents.

Moore's irreverent and sardonic short fiction make him a CanLit writer to watch and enjoy. Get a copy of Sensational Sherri while it's still available. Published in a limited edition of 80 copies, it won't be in print for very long.


*******************************************************


Sensational Sherri by Nathaniel G Moore is part of the Black Bile Press One-offs Chapbooks Series Three (also featuring Tony O’Neill and Julie McArthur).

Order all three books for only $10.00 (plus $2.00 postage), for a ridiculously good final price of $12.00 for all three books. Or order one chapbook (please specify the title) for $6.00 ($5.00 for the book, plus $1.00 postage). US orders, the same price applies, as the exchange rate to Canadian currency will cover the higher postal costs. UK and RoW orders, please email firth@istar.ca for the price in your currency.

Order by sending a cheque (made payable to M. Firth) to:

Matthew Firth
Black Bile Press
573 Gainsborough Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 2Y6 CANADA
http://ardentdreams.com/bbp/home.html

Queries: firth@istar.ca

Bill Bailey by Tony O'Neill
Black Bile’s One-off Chapbook Series 3
Black Bile Press, 16pp, $5.00 (CAN)

Review by Mark McCawley

Tony O'Neill is among the new vanguard of contemporary urban post-realist writers writing since the turn of the millennium. His fiction is raw, honest, unpretentious, unsympathetic and completely unapologetic in it's use of sex and violence. O'Neill deftly explores and examines the underside of modern urban life with dark, sardonic humour and a mordant insight which only a past substance user and abuser can possess.

In Bill Bailey, O'Neill gives us a violence and lust-filled story which follows O'Neill's unnamed narrator through a single alcohol-fuelled day in Hollywood. As with much contemporary urban fiction, the setting functions almost as a character onto itself - Hollywood's urban decay a microcosm for any urban center. O'Neill's further use of post-apocalyptic imagery gives the story an almost cinematic feel akin to George A. Romero and John Carpenter, with a dash of David Cronenberg:

"...death was everywhere. It was in the air. It clung to my clothes like last night's cigarettes. I stunk like a butcher's window; I reeked of death from the inside out." (p.5)

The city defines O'Neill's characters, moulds them, gives birth to them - the ultimately deforms them: "A construction worker with a gimp neck and a stutter", "a regular called Mickey who had busted, snaggled teeth and could quote long passages from Kierkegaard."

Throughout the story, O'Neill has a specific goal in mind with the character of Lupita. She is the narrator's primary focus, his obsession, the promise of sex.

Lupita "was a gleaming machine and the ass was the piston, the heart of it all. Up, down, up, down..." but she was flawed, too: She had bad teeth "that seemed too big for her mouth and too much make up. The rest of her could not live up to the promise of her ass...So maybe I was in luck after all."

From this point on O'Neill delivers a cautionary tale, a warning: be careful what you obsess over, covet, or desire.

You just might get it.


*******************************************************


Bill Bailey by Tony O'Neill is part of the Black Bile Press One-offs Chapbooks Series Three (also featuring Nathaniel George Moore and Julie McArthur).

Order all three books for only $10.00 (plus $2.00 postage), for a ridiculously good final price of $12.00 for all three books. Or order one chapbook (please specify the title) for $6.00 ($5.00 for the book, plus $1.00 postage). US orders, the same price applies, as the exchange rate to Canadian currency will cover the higher postal costs. UK and RoW orders, please email firth@istar.ca for the price in your currency.

Order by sending a cheque (made payable to M. Firth) to:

Matthew Firth
Black Bile Press
573 Gainsborough Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 2Y6 CANADA
http://ardentdreams.com/bbp/home.html

Queries: firth@istar.ca