Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

This is not infatuation.
This is small game hunting at the local coward gun club. And what is worse, as every stroke of recognition is finally delivered hard against Iris's hurt timepiece, is that all was lost the moment she opened the door and let him step across the threshold. He wanted her less from there.

As a sort of trigger warning, author Megan Gail Coles prefaces Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club with a page stating in full: This might hurt a little. Be brave.(And this after a dedication page which says, “I wrote this for myself. And the beautiful vicious island that makes and unmakes us.”) At the Giller Prize ceremony (for which this title had been shortlisted), Coles called this book “an act of resistance”, and taken all together, it's fair warning that Coles has a lot of opinions to share and she doesn't care who she offends with them. The story itself paints a bleak picture of life in modern day Newfoundland – not only the weather on a blustery, sleety Valentine's Day, but the current social conditions in this have-again/have-not-again province – and with off-putting details (so much vomit, phlegm, and semen) and persistent power struggles (sexism, classism, racism), there is, indeed, something challenging on nearly every page. People are poor and struggling, fragile hearts are broken, the undeserving (read: men; read: white men) get away with their wickedness. Add to this the literary devices used – omniscient narration jumping from character to character without warning or context, no quotation marks for dialogue, confusing chunks that require a reread for understanding – and Coles is demanding a lot from her audience. Despite experiencing as more dense than truly necessary, I did find this read to be ultimately rewarding; Coles can definitely write and the world she reveals here is one that those from away ought to see.

Despite its large cast of characters, this is essentially the story of two young women from a rural outpost in Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula, now trying to survive in St. John's. Olive – half-Native and raised mostly in bad foster care situations – is spending the snowy day away from her apartment in order to avoid her landlord and his demands for overdue rent:

Olive: whose gentlemen callers are never gentle or men but dregs of former humans driving red pickups full of smoke. Their pumping cherries recalling every murder program ever aired to warn, no, educate, no, remind, no, inform single women of the danger lurking just outside their double-locked doors, checked and rechecked and checked again for certainty.

And Iris: a painter who went to art school in Toronto but who now hostesses at the chic restaurant “The Hazel” in St. John's, and who is sleeping with its handsome, but married, chef:

Iris was meant to want nothing, demand less, not more. Her father's absence laying well the groundwork for the first one and then the next one and then John. He had told her in an honest afterglow that they were not even half a thing. Not even half a thing, ringing on repeat in her head. One foot in front of the other through the slush on the downgrade toward The Hazel. Not even half of something. She has learned to abuse herself in a misguided attempt to thwart expectation. You don't deserve any better. But very deep inside her body a tiny voice whispers into soft cupped hands...
...but you do.

Olive is hanging around The Hazel to keep warm out of the weather, and although Iris only showed up to pick up her paycheque, she is convinced to work a double shift in the dining room as a storm threatens outside and staff call in to say they can't get through the snow. Her fragile heart well and truly broken by John the chef, Iris is finally willing to consider her best friend Jo's estimate of him:

Jo would say he is a predator. The worst kind of man. A faux-minist. A liar. He made Iris believe in a falsehood. Fooled her. Groomed her. Identified the want in her and pretend-extended this back, though slightly out of reach of Iris's grasping hands. He kept her reaching and now she has been stretched beyond herself. No longer knowing her own mind.

To add to Iris's near-resolve to finally end this “not even half a thing” with John, his wife, George – the money behind the restaurant and the wallet John refuses to leave – decides to help out in the dining room, and as the storm builds outside and a variety of customers make their way through the restaurant, it becomes clear that the plot is working towards an explosive climax.

Most every character gets a complex backstory, and while this makes for some nice moments and proves that Coles really knows these people she has created, it also made the book feel longer than necessary. (I loved the vignette with little Iris in a sled with her cousins and her Nan – her Pop pulling the sled through the snow with a Skidoo while their ersatz sled-dogs run joyfully alongside – and I was glad it was in here, but did it really belong in here?) I see that Cole's last release was a book of short stories and that makes so much sense: these short but complex backstories seem more suited to the short story form, and maybe that's why this novel has the feel of a nonlinear mashup. These meanderings into non-main characters' histories also allow Coles to get more broadly political. The mayor of St. John's (snarkily referred to as “Major” David) has lunch in The Hazel, and not only does he overtly present as the worst example of privileged, old white male (gets away with abusing the wait staff, mentally explains why he refuses to tip), but cut jumps to other scenes with him justify our dislike of the mayor:

You know, Joanna, that I did not invent the Keurig, right? Though I wish I had. And off she went pontificating about the coffin-maker not committing the crime. Major David chewed down slowly while peering over her shoulder for an exit. Had there not been a number of junior staffers in the kitchenette that day, he would have just walked away from her. Just stop listening was a tactic he regularly employed. He left conversations with his wife and daughters all the time. It was a vagina-proof strategy.

There's a waiter, Damian, whose extraneous scenes do shine a light on an important through story, but the narrative of how he ruined his relationship with his partner was less integral, and the story of how Damien's mother became involved in gambling and embezzlement from work was even less related to the main story – but it did allow Coles to make this strange commentary on newspaper paywalls:

The people in charge, having allowed most, many, okay, more than before, the privilege of literacy, had now deemed having an educated citizenship a right hassle so were marking it up in a hurry, man. If motivation could overcome the hesitation and apathy long enough to scale that wall, people still would know that Dot was scared and full of remorse.

For the most part, the men in this story are pretty awful (except for Damien [probably because he's gay] and Omi [probably because he's an immigrant]), and while there is some understanding shown towards men who are under the constant pressure of having their livelihoods taken away as industry after industry collapses in Newfoundland, there's plenty of blame apportioned to the women who love to make excuses for their men; women who are quick to besmirch the reputation of any woman who cries rape (“Is it possible to rape a slut? Is it possible to rape a whore? Do you remember what little Jimmy looked like in his First Communion photo?”) and women who are quick to socially freeze out any abandoned mother who would dare to demand child support from their cash-strapped son or brother; on the rock, blood ties run much deeper than any notion of universal sisterhood. To comment on the political, sometimes Coles gets snarky (but does the tone serve the message?):

Rape is a powerful word well-despised by rapists the world over, because they rightfully don't like being called out for what they are or what they do as it will for sure impact their ability to continue doing so. Not full on prevent them from continuing to rape, but it is a kind of inconvenience in life moving forward.

At the Gillers, Coles pointed to Olive and Iris as the heart of her book, and I'd agree that it is their challenging stories that give this narrative poignancy. I see other reviewers commenting on this book's cover (it really is gorgeous) and wanted to end on the quote that inspired it:

Olive offers, I saw a pink caribou once.
And Iris nods and says, I want to be like that. After. I want to be a whole new animal.

Maybe not perfectly assembled, but there is much to love in the parts of this book.

The longlist for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize:

Days by Moonlight by André Alexis

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Immigrant City by David Bezmozgis
Greenwood by Michael Christie
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
The Innocents by Michael Crummey
Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds
Late Breaking by K.D. Miller
Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin
Lampedusa by Steven Price
Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta

Reproduction by Ian Williams


The prize was won by Ian Williams for Reproduction, but my favourite was Michael Crummey's The Innocents.