Review of Country of Cold: Stories of Sex and Death (Hardcover)

I read `Country of Cold' because I enjoyed the author's south sea travel memoir `The Water in Between'. I have to say that I was disappointed with this collection of short stories and I felt that my having read his memoir compounded this.

This book is a collection of `connected' short stories, a description I always find a little worrisome as it usually means a novel that didn't hang together or an author with a limited literary imagination, but as I liked his previous non-fiction book I thought it would be a worthwhile read. Halfway through I had the feeling that this was initially meant to be a novel in that the characters and plots seemed to be recycled throughout the stories. An example of this is that two characters in different stories (Cora and Daphne) both come from the same high-school, go to medical school, then on to work in Montreal before both coming back to Manitoba. (Rarely does any pair- outside of conjoined twins or single fictional characters that have been conveniently split into two- have such identical paths). Another criticism I have is that numerous events presented in Patterson's memoir are recounted and represented now as fiction (Interposition, Starlight, Starbright), and for me, the stories suffered because of it. (This isn't the author's problem of course, but my problem. In a way it's a compliment that Patterson is a more compelling character than any of his fictional creations).

The characters, all graduates of Dunsmuir High, lack a diversity one expects from a writer of Patterson's skill. They run through the interesting, but fairly narrow permutations of medical school, military service and work in the north of Canada (sometimes all three, a hat-trick scored by the author himself, and expounded upon in his memoir). An odd and recurring manifestation of this was that characters who were doctors or military personnel never had their physical attributes disparagingly described but other characters- a waitress `with a nose that could split pack ice' (in `Gabriella: Parts 1 and 2'), a bartender `with a profile like an engorged chigger' (in `Les is More') or a disappointing husband `long since grown fat and white like Oreo cookie filling' (in `Boatbuilding')- all had a harsher light cast on them. When the protagonist doesn't have the good luck to have lived through what Patterson has, as in the lovesick and obese bartender in `Les is More', the characterization suffers and in its place we get antics: a barrel is produced and the outsider strapped into to it for a ride over a waterfall. I suppose that's what irked me about the collection; that certain characters were rendered with less dignity (not as less dignified, an important difference) if they fell outside certain boundaries. Patterson seems to save his respect for the ennui of his medical or military officer characters or for the landscape itself; everyone else- like the beach-goers he derides in the title story- has an `L' firmly tattooed on their forehead:

"It was an astonishing place, and for all the regrettable fashion decisions and aesthetic failings, the scale of the forest still dwarfed the beet-faced people at its southern tip."

A low point is when several Inuit characters wander into Patterson's sights to make cameo appearances in the title story, where they are promptly subjected (in a span of ten pages!) to near-freezing in a blizzard, third degree burns from a tent fire, a botched medical procedure and a suicide by gun shot. I guess they should have joined the military. All of this mayhem is, of course, back-story to make us understand why the story's protagonist, a doctor who has worked in the north, is unable to `get on' with her life. Poor dear.

Certain stories, like 'The Perseid Shower' are quite good, showing that an exotic locale or a character intoxicated by boredom isn't a necessary feature of his work. The writing is the strongest when Patterson describes places, but even that has its limitations. The arctic is barren and vast and yes, I can imagine people are lonely there, but it doesn't mean that every story needs its mandatory blinding blizzard, dense cloud of mosquitoes, or night of exquisite starlight. We get it.

The collection ends with its weakest story `Manitoba Avenue', a piecing-together of the various storylines as the characters meet at their class reunion (which is, if possible, more derivative than it sounds).

All of this is a shame because Kevin Patterson is a very good writer who brings a great deal of intelligence into his work, and I had the feeling after finishing the book that I wanted to read more from him, but non-fiction. When he isn't writing about himself or people like him he lapses into disdainful characterization that boarders on arrogance. At least in non-fiction such attitudes (which he has every right to hold) are more honestly expressed.



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