The Malahat Review – Summer 2008

Hard as it would be to do, if I were pressed to name my top two or three favorite literary journals, I’d have to include The Malahat Review, which never fails to satisfy.

Hard as it would be to do, if I were pressed to name my top two or three favorite literary journals, I’d have to include The Malahat Review, which never fails to satisfy. The work is always sophisticated and mature, each issue carefully orchestrated. Summer 2008 is particularly appealing. At 30 pages, the centerpiece of the issue is the winner of the magazine’s 2008 Novella Prize, “Dead Man’s Wedding,” by Andrew Tibbetts, a sensitive (in the most generous sense of the term) and often humorous 1970’s coming-of-age story recounted in eleven numbered segments. The novella is a clever commentary on family life, popular culture, and the tensions between American and Canadian conduct and values. Tibbetts creates a believable and authentic boy’s voice that manages, at once, to merge a youthful perspective with a more adult sensibility (“But then the water flutters in its own way, out of sync with the music of the world.”), giving the story a tender authority that is extremely successful.

Another exceptional prose contribution is a short, piece of creative nonfiction by E.E. Mason, “No Man’s Land,” seven individually titled sections about Berlin, where the author lived for seven years. Mason’s prose is both tightly constructed and airy, a difficult balance to achieve, and it works. (“It takes time to learn the textures of a city.”) She has a steady hand and a firm grip on personal detail, revealing just enough to let us see her vulnerabilities and her openness to life away from home in England, but avoiding emotional excess (“I left everything I had in Leeds: my day job, my circle of friends, my life as a musician. I gave my car to my brother, my guitar to a bassist I knew. After an unexplainable breakdown I had finished medication, and my life seemed full”). On finishing the essay, I didn’t necessarily want to go to Berlin, but I certainly wanted to read more of Mason’s writing.

The Malahat Review always offers strong, memorable poetry, and this issue includes fine work by Sarah Barber, Jessica Hiemstra-Van der Horst, and Jim Johnstone, among others. I appreciate, too, the thoughtful and intelligently written book reviews, which introduce me to work I might not otherwise hear about.
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