Travellers May Still Returnby Michael KenyonPublished by Thistledown PressReview by Juliana Rupchan$20.00 ISBN 978-1-77187-187-7 Travellers May Still Return is a collection of three fiction pieces: two novella-length stories, bridged by a third, shorter piece. Michael Kenyon is based out of Victoria, but the collection is published by Saskatoon’s Thistledown Press, known for publishing literary poetry and fiction. Kenyon’s previous work includes five books of poetry, four chapbooks, and seven books of fiction, including The Beautiful Children, which won the 2010 ReLit Award for best novel. This extensive cross-genre experience shines through in Travellers May Still Return. The stories have the tension and smoothly crafted characters of a practiced fiction writer, woven through vivid imagery and existential questions that evoke a poetic practice. South and Central America are the main settings, and a strong sense of place as well as a tension of displacement are powerful forces in the longer novellas. While the narrative is not always easy to follow, Kenyon has created striking stories with just the enough mystery to stick in a reader’s mind, like a vivid dream half-remembered. The first novella, “The Prehistory of Jesse Green”, does an excellent job of sketching the central characters, and explores desire…

A Year at River Mountain by Michael Kenyon Published by Thistledown Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $19.95 ISBN 978-1-927068-04-5 Sometimes a book is a river, drawing us in. Such is A Year at River Mountain, by heralded BC writer Michael Kenyon. The enigmatic 68-year-old narrator of Kenyon’s introspective novel is, like most of us, trying to make sense of his life. The former stage and screen actor’s removed himself from the manic “engine,” “blue-green anger” and “loneliness” of the western world to seek harmony and practice acupressure in a Chinese monastery. He writes: “I am at River Mountain because I have turned my back on my family, history, country.” His former world included an estranged wife and son and his professional roles; stark contrast to the valley, mountains, temples, plum trees, bamboo forest and fellow monks that surround him now. It sounds pacific, but there are memories to wrestle with, and desire, and near the river beneath the monastery, nomadic tribes spar over boundaries and hungry children go missing. The nameless monk’s past and present converge; he has traded “monks for players, master for director” as he goes about his daily routines of prayers, meditation, chores (ie: sweeping leaves…

The Beautiful Children by Michael Kenyon Published by Thistledown Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $18.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-47-8 I’ve just finished The Beautiful Children, a poetic novel by BC writer Michael Kenyon, and feel I’m waking from a trance. In Kenyon’s mystifying story one’s never quiet sure what’s real and what’s imagined, or how the author – who hass previously published four books of fiction and two poetry collections – manages to shape-shift this harrowing tale about urban street kids and lost adults into a book that celebrates life. That sleight-of-hand, Kenyon’s musical language, and the book’s surrealistic qualities are its charms. The plot is easiest to follow in the first of the book’s three sections. Sapporo, a Japanese man, awakes with amnesia and finds himself in a hospital. In time he leaves the hospital with his son, a boy of ten. The awkward pair play catch, and at home, the uneasy roommates are “two animals who were shy of each other.” Sapporo regularly sees a therapist, but as time progresses he sinks further into his dreamlike world. He tracks the passing of time and records impressions but doesn’t understand their meaning. And he has no idea how to parent:…