In 'My White Planet' Mark Anthony Jarman shows off a mastery of the language, producing metaphors and images that are beautiful, disturbing and hilarious. Review by Jackie Wallace

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Jackie Wallace

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It would be easy to think that a short story collection that tells tales of the Riel rebellion, an oldtimers' hockey league, a polar research station and the aftermath of the death of a teenage skateboarder is an anthology of different writers. But in fact they all make up My White Planet, Fredericton-based writer Mark Anthony Jarman's newest collection of 14 stories.

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While each of the stories is distinct, the collection is held together by Jarman's reverence for each and every word and its potential in playing a part in metaphors and images that are at times beautiful, disturbing and hilarious. The book is full of word play that will make the reader stop and consider it for a moment because it is strikingly fresh.

Within the diversity of the book some of the stories are sparse, tense and challenging, while others play fast and loose with words and create fun, bouncy tales.

The first story, Night March in the Territory, is a gritty account of the Wild West at the time of Colonel Custer and the fighting between his troops and the American Indians. The stream of consciousness of the anonymous narrator offers the mental state of a soldier succumbing to physical discomfort and fear, as he comes to see the mind as "a thin baked cracker that can snap."

The struggle of this character against danger and nature offers a thread that runs through many of the stories. There is an element of battle and survival, in both historic and modern contexts, that can be grand and dramatic or everyday and ordinary.

A domestic screaming match between spouses over who does more as a parent in the story Bad Men Who Love Buzz Lightyear results in the conclusion that "she is right and I am right." A similar conclusion is reached in Night March in the Territory when it comes to light that "they can't forgive us coming in and we can't forgive them for being there."

These conflicts extend beyond human relationships and into nature where animals often lay in wait to attack, horses step on sleeping men's skulls, unforgiving elements challenge those who live off the land and a relentless river claims the life of a boy who slips off a bridge.

Jarman places the human characters within their surroundings and within history, and finds that "we are amazingly unequipped for this world, yet we've flourished to the point of ruining a world that tries so hard to ruin us."

Such weighty ideas are balanced with lighter bits. It seems Jarman just can't resist. In the title story, the polar researcher notices that "two polar bears stalk us; we're bi-polar," while in another story he can't let the mention of New York go by without adding the cheeky poem "the city so nice they attacked it twice." On a dark country road it can't help but be noted that Exit Realty signs play tricks with the eyes that force them to be read as Exit Reality.

One of the strongest pieces in the collection is A Nation Plays Chopsticks, an essay that brilliantly expresses the affection and perverse addiction a member of an old-timers' hockey team feels for his teammates and the sport. It was a National Magazine Award finalist in sports writing and is one of the most New Brunswick-centered stories in the collection.

The ragtag hockey team braves the moose-infested highway between Fredericton and Saint John, slash and fight as rough as their aching joints will allow and intentionally lose occasionally to avoid a tourney's final game that would see them get home too late on a Sunday night. When teammate Dave the D's body tells him it's time for him to throw in the towel, he tosses his equipment into a dumpster because he worries "he'd keep playing just one more winter, then just one more, unless he physically got rid of his gear."

The stories of My White Planet are inventive and brim over with the ideas and skill of a gifted storyteller. The reader is left with the sense that Jarman is challenging himself and taking us with him, but also that he is having fun doing it and that it is exciting to be along for the ride.

Jackie Wallace is a writer living in Rothesay