The Canadian city of Vancouver has undergone a rather grim transformation at the pen of Canadian author Zsuzsi Gartner. Gartner’s newly published book of short stories titled Better Living Through Plastic Explosives offers an introspective look into the author’s futuristic imagining of Vancouver, a city where an Olympic mascot kidnaps a young boy and IKEA product names form the basis of an erotic language.
‘I would say it is a portrait of Vancouver, my Vancouver,’ Gartner told Reuters. ‘I’ve created my own kind of mythology, set in the near future, of how I view the city itself. I map different psychic and demographic spaces, but telling the stories I like to tell, which are dark satire.’
Gartner is indeed known for her satirical sense of humour, and her latest work has already been shortlisted for Canada’s Giller Prize. As to how she came up with the idea for a short story collection based around futuristic Vancouver, Gartner acknowledges that it began with a mixed concept encompassing the difficulty of being a 21st century man, evolution and Darwin’s theories.
‘Then the idea of devolution instead of evolution, what if we started devolving instead of evolving?’ she said. ‘Those things I was interested in came together and I found a narrative for them. Here’s a cosy little setup, a classic story scenario – you know, At the Door Knocks a Stranger. Equilibrium is disturbed. The out of towner, the lost brother, the guy who doesn’t fit in.’
Although they are all set in Vancouver, the stories feature widely different scenarios. In The Adopted Chinese Daughters’ Rebellion, Gartner describes pushy Canadian parents who attempt to push their adopted children into Buddhism, while The Summer of the Flesh Eater tells the story of a meeting between a group of vegans and a carnivorous truck-driver with a tendency for serving up slabs of meat.
‘The demographics of Vancouver are important if you’re trying to understand the book… It’s the fabric of what goes on here,’ she said. ‘When you isolate a microcosm of a population on a cul-de-sac and put a microscope on them, you have a bit of a petri dish.’
As a satirist, Gartner has revealed that her style has become harder to write as so much of the world has become ‘self-satirizing.’
‘You open the paper or go online, and it’s really hard to satirize a world – not just a society but a world – that’s become so self-satirizing,’ she said. ‘So I push things slightly into the future. I thought that if I project it three to five years ahead, and make up stuff that’s a little otherworldly, then I can keep one step ahead of things.’
Gartner will soon be making a special appearance at the Adelaide Writers’ Week in March. Her previous work includes the critically acclaimed short fiction collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth.
