Review: Bats or Swallows

by Shawn Syms

In her refreshing short-fiction debut Bats or Swallows, Montreal-based Teri Vlassopoulos has drawn upon her experience in the confessional world of handcrafted zines to create stories that are immediate and personal. In this collection of 11 glimpses into the lives of teenaged girls and young women, Vlassopoulos delivers clean, clear prose and a narrative voice that suggests a close friend sharing her secrets. In spite of the conversational tone, however, the subject matter can sometimes veer into unexpected and challenging directions.

Vlassopoulos’s primary preoccupation is women’s relationships – with best friends, boyfriends, and especially with their parents and siblings – and the ways such intimate affinities can be affected by transitions ranging from pregnancy and polyamory, to breakups and death. Blood ties are a particular focus. In My Son, The Magician, the author considers the relationship of a single mom with her adult son – who is not a magician at all but rather a male stripper.

Familial interactions take an even darker turn in Baby Teeth: A woman leads her young daughter into the woods and abandons her, only to hang herself a short while later.

In the above-mentioned stories, the author displays a skill for drawing settings and creating premises that are unique and distinctive, all without falling into contrivance.

The entire book is not so grim in tone, though. What Counts explores adolescent sexuality from the perspective of Esther, a mixed-race teen who loses her virginity to a boy. She then practices same-sex kissing with a needy best friend and it all comes under the disapproving eye of her cousin Mary, who considers Esther neither Filipina enough nor Catholic enough because her dad was an Irish atheist. The story captures Esther’s emerging erotic and cultural awakenings in ways that feel authentically confused and disorienting.

Though the language is fairly plainspoken throughout, there are just enough splashes of colourful description to liven things up. Hushpuppies chronicles a road trip between two young lovers marked by a confession of infidelity over a shared bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon, “red wax melted and smeared all over the top like congealed blood.” The advent of Nikki and Thomas’s relationship is marked by such excitement that Nikki smashes headfirst into a pane of glass in order to take one of his phone calls. Thomas later caresses the stitches on her scalp and feels “the raised railroad of dark thread.”

In this collection, stories have been consciously placed next to others whose contents are quite different but which share similar thematic concerns – such as the trio of opening stories that all relate somehow to mysticism or the occult, or two adjacent stories about the untimely deaths of parents – to subtle and pleasing effect.

Bats or Swallows is an enjoyable read and promising first effort from a writer with a knack for crafting characters with whom I felt instantly comfortable and curious. Grab a copy of this book and you may find yourself able to devour it in one or two sittings, just as I did.

Shawn Syms’s fiction is forthcoming on Joyland.ca.