The Withdrawal Method

The Withdrawal Method is a collection of stories by Pasha Malla, and is something of a mixed bag. The stories featured in it range from the mundane to the fantastical, and from the morose to the joyful, making for an interesting read in general. The book's title, The Withdrawal Method, is very apropos - many of the stories, such as Dizzy When You Look Down In and Big City Girls, seem to end around two or three paragraphs before you would expect them to, in a sort of storius interruptus. At first this is kind of unsettling, and jolts you out of your experience of reading the book, but the more it happens, the more accustomed to it you become, which allows you to realize how effective of a storytelling device it is. Rather than jolt you out of the story, like you would assume a ‘withdrawal' ending would; Malla does it in a way that draws you further into the story, desperate to supply an ending of your own. It inspires, which is something that all good art should try to do.

I found Malla's writing to be at it's most effective when dealing with more fantastical elements, such as in the stories Being Like Bulls and The Love Life of the Automaton Turk. The former, a tale of a dystopian future where climate change has changed Niagara Falls into a landfill, takes on one of those themes so central to classical Canadian literature - how our identity is shaped by our environment. It also rather cynically looks at how willing people are to profane and destroy the majesty around them, and then also destroy even our memories of what majesty is, so that we don't have to live with ourselves knowing what we've given up.

Overall, The Withdrawal Method is a tragically poignant collection of stories, and is a must-read for anyone interested in seeing where Canadian literature is heading in the 21st century.

(in the interests of disclosure: I was given a free copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for writing a review about it)