David Huebert

The world of David Huebert’s second collection of short fiction, Chemical Valley, is a poisonous, inhospitable place. In some respects, as we turn these pages, it’s easy to imagine we’re visiting a future world: the one that awaits our elder selves and our descendants should humans continue to obliterate CO2-absorbing flora and allow toxic effluents and emissions to pour unchecked into the land, sea and air. One might assume that the author intends these tales of struggle and longing in a tarnished landscape to be cautionary: prognostications of environmental cataclysm, annihilation at our own hands. But as we read, what David Huebert is really telling us becomes clear: this is the world in which we currently reside, and the confusion and desperation his characters experience as contaminants seep unseen into the earth and the biological slowly succumbs to the chemical is everyone’s here and now. This is serious business. But though the messaging is palpable, there is nothing heavy-handed in his approach: no doomsday declaration, no portentous drumbeat. In Chemical Valley, as in his previous volume of stories, Peninsula Sinking, David Huebert’s knack for creating engaging characters and finding interesting things for them to say, do and think is on abundant, boisterous display. Huebert’s characters are Every-man and -woman, people whose daily rituals, quandaries and tribulations mirror our own. The narrator of the title story, set in Sarnia—hub of Canada’s petrochemical industry and nicknamed “Chemical Valley”—works at a processing plant. His partner, Eileen, is off work, suffering from a mysterious, debilitating malady. With the indifference of his employer as a backdrop, we witness him floundering under domestic and professional pressures while grappling with manifestations of community contamination, so widespread they have infiltrated his home. “Swamp Thing” tells the story of teenage Sapphire. Bouncing between her separated parents, embroiled in a clandestine affair with her female English teacher, Sapphire and her friends Dee Dee and Jenna are members of the ultra-climate-change-conscious generation meeting the disastrous consequences of the previous generation’s environmental profligacy head on. The story, set during a punishing heatwave, chronicles Sapphire’s emotional awakening through a series of catastrophic climate/environmental incidents, culminating in “a super-flare, a major melt-down, and a death at the plant.” Elsewhere in the book we encounter Deepa, a young mother barely coping with a recalcitrant newborn, a complacent husband and a rodent infestation (“Cruelty”), a reluctant hockey enforcer whose personal life is a mess (“Six Six Two Fifty”), Zane, whose partner Geoff is obsessively preparing for the coming environmental apocalypse (“SHTF”), and fifty-year-old socially-challenged Edward, bullied all his life, afflicted with a maddening fungal skin infection, whose man-made companion (the GenuFlesh XS-4000, “a fully customizable” “anthropomorphic robobride”), named Lily, is just about done for, worn out by his constant need (“The Pit”). Throughout the book, Huebert’s prose shines, frequently catching the reader off guard with startling but memorable turns of phrase and delirious imaginative leaps. And while the manic energy, eccentric humour and wry observations on life and love keep us entertained, the book’s rich emotional core draws us in, touching us at the most profound level.

David Huebert writes in a pulsating, kinetic contemporary voice. Still at an early point in his career, he has complete command of his craft. These quirky, artfully composed stories are a gift worth savouring.… (más)

In David Huebert’s inaugural collection of short stories, we encounter a variety of characters standing on the edge of lives in the process of transformation. Huebert writes emotion like a raw wound—throbbing and bloody. With astounding and sometimes alarming ease, he peels back his characters’ protective carapace to reveal the naked, trembling flesh beneath. The CBC Short Story Prize winning “Enigma,” which opens the volume, is a powerful case in point. In this story the young narrator is facing the imminent loss of her beloved horse. The animal is lame, the situation is only going to worsen, and the narrator’s love is not strong enough to save either of them. In “Sitzpinkler,” Miles is heading out to sea on a submarine for 105 days, one of a crew of 58; the assignment: to defend the sovereignty of Canada’s 200-mile offshore limit. Miles comes from a family of eccentrics (his pet name for his father is “the old Nazi” and his mother has recently succumbed to Botox poisoning). For Miles, emotional support has been hard to come by and life often takes the opportunity to remind him of his shortcomings. And though he worries about what could go wrong on a vessel submerged under tons of sea water, as any right-thinking individual would, it turns out that the greatest danger he faces is not the crushing pressure of the ocean, but the risk that while confined in close quarters he will accidentally let down his guard and reveal his foolish private self. Elsewhere we encounter a lonely and mistrustful prison guard with a hopeless crush on an inmate (“Maxi”), a pregnant woman who sneaks drinks and then struggles with her guilt (“Horse People”), and a young woman who, amidst a series of minor calamities, is struggling to find direction (“How Your Life”). The centrepiece of the collection is the 60-page title story, in which we witness three snapshot episodes in the life of Gavin that extend from his teenage years to young adulthood. Like Miles, Gavin’s life is coloured by regret and dominated by a fear that his baser instincts and the fact that he has no idea what it takes to live a decent and productive life will be exposed for all to see. This story is also a heartbreaking love song to Gavin’s (and the author’s) home province of Nova Scotia, but one that doesn’t hold back when it comes to enumerating the love object’s faults and failures. Overall, the collection is a triumph. In each story Huebert creates complex characters and a complete world for them to inhabit. His writing is urgent, uninhibited, packed with minute but relevant detail, and often very funny. Peninsula Sinking is a noteworthy debut that heralds the arrival of a singular literary voice, one that many of us will be eagerly awaiting to hear from again.… (más)