Abstract

Dead Brother’s Club is a collection of eight short stories that look at the ways in which relationships are renegotiated after change, strain and loss. The stories portray characters with fluctuating degrees of self-awareness, forced to adapt to circumstances that have flung them from their comfort zones into the awkward, murky fissures the loss or change has opened up. “Gabor,” “Dead Brother’s Club” and “The Larper” are particularly concerned with connections between memory, commemoration and grief, while the work as a whole presents characters whose attempts at resolving their traumatic experiences are always inadequate or incomplete.

“Jane Pinches,” “The Take Out,” and “The Hemming” operate in a comic mode and rely on familiar character archetypes. They are alike in their stylization— dialogue-driven with limited expository intrusion—and in their use of hammy, absurd or tongue-in-cheek humour. While their action is often ridiculous, their emotional tenor is grounded in reality. In keeping with the other pieces in the project, what ultimately triumphs in these vignettes is the strength of the bonds between characters, which tether them to the world and cushion them from a larger alienation.