Despair: And Other Stories

Trinidadian-born Canadian author Alexis was shortlisted for a Commonwealth prize for this daring collection of eight dark, quixotic stories. Most feature a guileless, straightforward narration that belies the true eccentricity of the narrators, who have fetishes for deformed hands or who broodingly impart tales of voodoo curses, vampire hauntings and a doctor's unusual experiments. In ""Horse,"" Dr. Pascal rents a room in a house owned by a man mourning the death of his mother. Ordinary logic stops here, as Pascal calmly offers to pay extra rent to compensate for the fact that, though he fornicates, he has ""no issue to show for it,"" and begins his research, which consists of stapling thousands of flies to wooden boards. This story is weighted with baffling psychological metaphors and puzzles so meticulously and convincingly constructed they somehow make sense. Dream logic marks all of Alexis's stories, especially in ""The Third Terrace."" Here the unnamed male narrator is an aspiring painter, newly arrived in Toronto, who trolls the streets looking for prostitutes with mutilated hands, and what he does with them somehow involves burlap and axle grease. He toils as a hand model in erotic movies to pay the bills. After consorting with a prostitute, he is robbed and beaten, his own painting and modeling hand mangled. All this is related in a weirdly resigned monologue so disturbingly detached the reader is left to puzzle over bizarre events that seem to be, in the unruffled narrator's world, quite ordinary. In ""The Night Piece,"" a young man called Winston claims he is dying because his landlady is a Soucouyant--in Caribbean mythology a person (usually female) who lives by sucking blood from others at night. Part ghost-story, part Borgesian meta-reality, part Twilight Zone, Alexis's book may confuse and frighten mainstream audiences, but readers looking for innovative, sharp and twisted new fiction will find it here. (Jan.)