rev. of Bang Crunch by Neil Smith

Bang Crunch, stories by Neil Smith (Vintage):   Most literary trends produce both brilliant and unfortunate incarnations, and the "quirky fiction" school is no exception. The less successful manifestations of this trend toward off-kilter fictional realities seem to embrace weirdness for the sake of weirdness, to privilege style over substance, while the more memorable works support Steven Millhauser's assertion that "the conventions of the realist story don't begin to do justice to the blazing thing that deserves the name of reality."

Neil Smith's Bang Crunch unquestionably falls into the latter category. The Montreal-based author's debut features such oddities as a story narrated by a pair of gloves and a severed foot, a man who organizes a support group for people with benign tumors, and, in the title story, a young girl afflicted with an illness that causes her to age one month per day, then grow backwards into infanthood. In the hands of a lesser writer, such premises might result in pretentious and hollow stories that read like exercises in the bizarre, but in Bang Crunch, the madcap elements are keys that unlock the inner lives of the characters, uncovering human truths that are intimate and profound.

Smith employs a ferocious humor that calls to mind Lorrie Moore, Joy Williams, and George Saunders. His characters are often sarcastic, restless, and discontent. "Maybe more marriages would last if couples didn't live together...Maybe couples should buy two semi-detacheds and each live on either side," An, the narrator of "Isolettes," says to the friend she has conceived a child with. He replies: "That's why you always strike out at love, An...You're so semi-detached." Reminiscent of Lorrie Moore's People Like That Are the Only People Here, "Isolettes" concerns the premature birth of An's daughter, B, and her time in the NICU. Despite the tragic turn of events, An remains "semi-detached," too numb and bewildered to connect with a child who is unlikely to survive. Smith masterfully depicts the subtle cracking of her veneer and when, in the story's final paragraph, after B has died, An is able to offer, "Oh, but I liked her...I liked her so much," the emotional crescendo is deeply felt—a dazed, disconnected woman inching her way toward vulnerability and compassion.

Smith's biting wit allows him to traverse challenging thematic territories—the aftermath of a campus shooting, a fatally ill child—without descending into melodrama. In "Green Fluorescent Protein," for example, snappy dialogue, a widow who entombs her husband's ashes in a curling stone, and a glowing guinea pig are set against more familiar elements: an adolescent boy grappling with his father's death, his alcoholic mother, and his own sexuality. Though dramatic situations are balanced with quirk and comedy, Smith consistently renders his characters with pathos and complexity, so their pain feels immediate and true.

The spare elegance of the prose also distinguishes Smith as an authentic talent. When descriptive moments arrive, they are spot-on and carry an emotional wallop. The moon is a "broken dinner plate;" the thin skin and organs of a premature baby are likened to "the way shrimp is visible under the rice paper of a spring roll;" a woman's hands rest on her knees like "balls of dough." Smith is not a languorous writer, preferring to craft narratives that move briskly, with expertly timed scenes that, with swift grace, build into affecting arcs. Though there's a hip, of-the-moment quality to Smith's writing, his craftsmanship, compassion, and dark intelligence are timeless. Bang Crunch is an impeccably crafted and moving debut.  —Laura van den Berg

Laura van den Berg recently completed her M.F.A. at Emerson College. Her fiction has or will soon appear in One Story, American Short Fiction, The Literary Review, StoryQuarterly, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008 , among others. Her first story collection will be published by Dzanc Books in late 2009 .