Book review: Bill Richardson’s West End stories deliver a rare blend of whimsy and compassion
Credit to Author: Tracey Tufnail| Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2020 19:00:02 +0000
I Saw Three Ships
West End Stories
By Bill Richardson (Talonbooks, 2019)
$16.95 | 247pp
The many fans who loved local writer Bill Richardson’s elfin charm on CBC and who celebrated his recognition by the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and other awards will welcome this new collection of stories set in Vancouver’s West End, and other exotic locales.
Those who learned from an item Richardson performed on his alma mater CBC Radio that he had recently been making additional income as a dishwasher will be glad to know the experience hasn’t blunted his rapier wit or discouraged him as a writer.
The evidence is to be found in I Saw Three Ships, a collection of eight linked stories loosely tied to the Christmas season and to a fictional apartment building called the Santa Maria.
But no one who has treasured Richardson’s fey and whimsical style needs to fear that he has turned in his golden years to seasonal sentimentality or the cheap pleasures of wholesome uplift.
As he says in his introduction to this delightful collection, “Whatever else these stories might be, wholesome they ain’t. I hope not, anyway: if they are wholesome, I’ve failed.”
No worries, Bill. These stories have enough references to the mixed blessings of Eros in its many forms, to reasonable amounts of substance abuse, and to death and its discontents to disqualify them as wholesome or uplifting.
Bill Richardson.
They are, however a treat for any season. Richardson is in fine form in these stories, many of which appeared first in the Georgia Straight, Reader’s Digest or on CBC Radio. Expanded and polished for publication in this volume, they represent a triumph of whimsy and compassion, humility, humour and lapidary prose.
The stories feature a character named Leonard Cohen (not the singer/songwriter) walking home through a rare Vancouver snowfall in a wedding dress while protected by a guardian saint; a long time manager at the Santa Maria who loves typos and misprints; two characters who refer to each other archly as Davie Denman and Nicola Harwood; and a ghost that announces its presence with a wafting aroma of Armani cologne, poppers, and Gauloises cigarettes.
It is all suffused with a kind of campy charm that would make Susan Sontag envious, and that will be no surprise to Richardson fans, while delighting new readers. The tender compassion that underlies the humour is a bonus.
Richardson has crafted a gift for all seasons here.
• Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver, but none of his experiences with ghosts occurred in the West End. He welcome your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net
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