Theories of Everything

Theories of Everything
by Dwayne Brenna
Published by Shadowpaw Press
Review by Brandon Fick
$22.99 ISBN 9781998273294

In less than 180 pages, Dwayne Brenna’s short story collection, Theories of Everything, takes readers around the globe into disparate eras and unique voices, inviting them to sample a little bit of everything. More than most short story collections, which often contain similar settings, characters, and themes, Theories of Everything is diverse and irreverently ordered, as if saying: “A story is a story, no matter what it contains. Deal with it.” At least a couple of its fifteen stories will jive with any reader. Whether you want to read about an aged rock star, a couple on the brink of separation, or a murderous parrot, whether you are in the mood for academic satire or the truth about Hollywood, and whether you want to go to Costa Rica, Libya, London, Hawaii, or rural Saskatchewan, it’s all here.

Brenna takes a no-nonsense approach to storytelling. Within the first paragraph or even the first few sentences of his stories, you are in the predicament. A fine example being the opening lines of “Isla Mujeres”: “Still in his pyjamas, my husband Jim is stretched out on one of a pair of beds, a rum and Coke in his hands. Our friends, Nancy and Don, are lounging on the comfy sofa, looking slightly more dignified in their shorts and tee shirts. We’ve been at the Plaza Royale resort in Playa del Carmen for a couple of days now, and it’s almost ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning.” Brenna’s background as a drama professor is evident in the way he uses dialogue and builds narrative momentum through short, impactful scenes. There is no unnecessary navel-gazing; all the interiority is precise and purposeful. These are stories of events, some more than others, such as “War Wonton,” which recalls a bully’s run-ins with the owner of a Chinese café, and “Theory of Everything,” which describes the entanglement of a down-on-his-luck middle-aged man with a mentally unwell young man. Both stories rely on physical action and violence to reach their conclusions. Many conclusions are traditional epiphanies or tie back to a specific detail in a story. In “Resurrection,” about a young sociopath’s tenuous grip on reality, the final line snaps everything into place: “I feel like I’ve been killed and resurrected a thousand times in my life already so maybe another resurrection is soon to come.”

Personally, I can relate to the stories set in far away locales just as much as those set in rural Saskatchewan. One of my favourites, “Meeting Tiffany Sloane,” about a Hollywood tour bus operator’s obsession with a specific starlet, contains just the right amount of location-specific description: “They were sitting on the corner of Las Palmas and Sunset Strip beside the old Baptist Church. Jack clunked the vehicle into gear and headed north toward Mulholland Drive. He pointed out the church hall where the dance scenes from Back to the Future were filmed and the fire escape that Richard Gere climbed to get to Julia Roberts at the end of Pretty Woman.” For someone from California, Brenna is equally adept at conjuring up Depression-era Saskatchewan, as in “The Sewing Machine”: “The winds raged through the nights, cracked their cheeks against the broken windowpanes, caused the coal oil lamps inside to flicker and wane. By September, the crop of wheat stood burnt in the field, too spindly even to be used as cattle feed.” All the globe-trotting works because Brenna has a firm grasp on the fundamentals of craft. His main characters have a significant want, he places obstacles in front of them, and off the stories go. Along the way, there is social commentary on the military-industrial complex (“Collateral Damage”), rapacious capitalism (“Big Oil”), and the business of eco-tourism (“Los Diablitos”). Humour, often black, shows up in the almost absurdist stories “Train Ride with Busconi” and “Blood-Red Polish” – with the aforementioned murderous parrot – and “How To Be Happy,” which is both satire and a call to action for aging, out-of-touch academics.

Brenna proves himself to be an economical but highly effective storyteller in Theories of Everything. If I was teaching a creative writing class, I could see myself pressing this book into the hands of aspiring undergraduate writers, like I myself was not too long ago. There is much to glean in this succinct book, and just as much to enjoy.

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