“the cold clobbered him like a side of frozen beef.”
PJ Reece’s “Throw Mama from the Boat and Other Ferry Tales” is a delightful romp into one aspect of life on the Sunshine Coast, travel to and from Vancouver on a boat.
But Reece has taken this premise and turned it into a high concept collection of short stories that occur during the short space of a ferry ride. He takes it a step further by adding magical realism wherever it serves his storytelling. People disappearing out of photographs, the shadow of an animal creature that no one can identify except for the trusty and mysterious animal whisperer. People turning themselves into birds and hairy animals of the forest.
The reader’s experience with each of his characters are fleeting, their dramas told with a bemused smile. There’s no need for, nor is there deep emotional attachment, as there’s not enough time. But you see his characters stumbling onto the upper deck in a wind, converging at the Ship’s Captain’s office for a wedding ceremony between two dogs, or on the car deck, or in an ambulance, or the belly of a whale. And even as we’re in the familiar interior of our car in an inching ferry line, Reece distracts – with a touch of whimsical fantasy that seems to occur in this witty world of misfits and seekers, and just enough bizarre intrigue to keep you reading.
I found myself re-reading whenever this occurred – thinking ‘What did he mean by that?’ You’re never quite sure what actually happened, was it in the suggestion, your mind, a reflection? Some of the tales fit together with each other, as you’ll observe a character from a previous story on the ferry two months later, figuring into someone else’s story. Most of his characters get into conversations where they reveal that they’re searching for meaning in life and others are caught unawares, as the man who loses his girlfriend to morphing into a seagull, or the woman whose house burns down as she stands helplessly on deck in the midst of another drama. Two ask, “Where are we going?” Another, in a phone conversation says, “I don’t know, Rolf – evolution tends to lean forward, doesn’t it? So, which way are we headed?”
Ah, existential questions and double-entendres. Art imitating life and hell freezing over. A character dressed in a headscarf and sunglasses who reminds of Zsa zsa Gabor or Rita or Audrey or Marilyn, until Reece finally decides, it’s Zsa Zsa. The burning question: when would it be time to throw Mama from the boat? She seems to want it and as the reader tries to unravel what is fiction and what is magical, Reece’s characters reach their epiphanies: “That’s what old age looks like. You want to be shot.” I really enjoyed these stories and the unique aspect of our geography, and the slightly exotic aspect of the ferry – all told together made me feel proud with recognition to be a Sunshine Coast resident, one of his ferry goers.
The cover? Unable to reject #MeToo now that it’s out of the bottle and we can talk about these things, it’s unsettling to see the good design of this book spoiled (for me) by the image of a woman’s body struggling under water (is she naked? is she drowning?) as part of the joke, even as the sentient beings on the ferry, oblivious, ride off into a beautiful sunset. Disappoints me to think that with this ‘just for laughs’ title and story, ‘boys will (still) be boys’. Makes me hear the famous go-to line of fifties and sixties comedy routines– “Take my wife – please.”, when women were the object of all sorts of things, the least of which, was a laugh. In spite of the cluelessness of this joke, my enjoyment of PJ and his twisted, witty but searching sense of life
= 4 stars.
