8. The Withdrawal Method by Pasha Malla and 9. When She Was Queen by MG Vassanji

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I read The Withdrawal Method a while back but forgot to post about it. I remembered when I finished When She Was Queen because they're both collections of short stories and also happen to have Indian-Canadian authors although the content and style of both are very different.

The Withdrawal Method
Product Description (from publisher)
Haunting and fresh, shot through with empathy and humour, Pasha Malla's deceptively smooth, brilliant stories grant us entry into fascinating worlds - the forbidden, complex world of children acting out half-understood fantasies of adulthood; the familiar, modern world of young couples navigating hairpin emotional turns; a near-future world where Niagara Falls has run dry; a long-past world where a frustrated chess-master unwittingly invents a sinister machine that will affect the lives of generations to come.

As in the extraordinary stories of writers such as Lorrie Moore, Haruki Murakami, George Saunders, and Barbara Gowdy, Pasha Malla offers us characters who are recognizable and situations that are familiar, and then peels back layers to reveal the strange, the wondrous, and the unexpected. The Withdrawal Method is an assured and mature first collection from one of our best young writers, one who pairs striking emotional depth with remarkable technical skill.

My Impressions
This collection of short stories were all over the place in terms of tone and content. As I said, I was reminded of this collection while reading the other and in comparing the two, I feel this one was somehow lighter. That's not to say some of the stories were not about serious subjects, e.g. there is one about a character's reaction to his girlfriend suffering from skin cancer, but there was a sense that maybe the characters were not taking the situations as seriously. Actually, it was more like they were reacting in a more non-traditional manner, veering into imaginary and/or fantastical situations. Also, maybe this is because of the difference in perspective and experience but the stories in this book were more...local? Smaller scale somehow although the stories in Queen are also very personal yet feel more universal because of the events mentioned or providing the backdrop. It also doesn't hurt that the locations, to me, are more unfamiliar. Most of the points of view in the stories in Withdrawal were from younger characters than in Vassanji's collection. They also reflected the other side of the situations; that is, in Vassanji's stories, the characters were the immigrants, with ties to a homeland and trying to make a life in the new country, away from strife, poverty, etc. In Malla's stories that dealt with the immigrant experience, it was the children's side of the story. However, Malla's stories were also more varied; the one that I remember the most vividly was "The Love Life of the Automaton Turk" which was not about the immigrant experience at all (looking through the book, there aren't actually that many). Overall, I'm not sure if I liked this collection although I found the stories compelling. There were funny and touching moments but some of the stories were unsettling. I would probably try to read the novel he's working on to see if it's the form (i.e. short story) that I'm having trouble with. I definitely didn't feel any of the stories were too short.

When She Was Queen
Product Description (excerpt from publisher)
Set variously in Kenya, Canada, India, Pakistan, and the American Midwest, these poignant and evocative stories portray migrants negotiating the in-between worlds of east and west, past and present, secular and religious. Richly detailed and full of vivid characters, the stories are worlds unto themselves, just as a dusty African street full of bustling shops is a world, and so is the small matrix of lives enclosed by an intimate Toronto neighbourhood. It is the smells and sentiments and small gestures that constitute life, and of these Vassanji is a master.

My Impressions
I was struck by the abundance and importance of religion in these stories. I never realized how unaware I was of it because I'm an atheist. But the customs, the rituals, the way it permeates people's lives (e.g. in one story, the characters figure out where a fellow immigrant lives by the mosque she attends) was unexpected for me. It's another difference between this collection and Malla's. Vassanji's stories are also - for lack of better word - heavier although there are fantastical/imaginary moments too. Some of the stories were just as vaguely unsettling as Malla's but I found them warmer somehow, and unexpectedly funny. My favourite was "Elvis, Raja" which was about a man visiting his old school friend in the American Midwest. They're all Indian. His friend is so devoted to Elvis that he calls on the spirit of the King (or Raja) via a Ouija board to help make decisions including if the visiting friend should stay longer. The visitor then later has to make his escape with the help of his friend's daughter in the dark of night. I liked this collection more than Malla's; I would definitely want to read more about some of the characters and indeed Vassanji writes more about some of them in loosely related stories in the book.