Helms alee!
Sad, fantastic prose fragments make this is an absolutely fabulous read. You could pay $20 for a book of stories and not get a quarter of what Breakfast gives us. This is actually the follow up to the book I Missed You by David Bell, which is what Jack calls himself when he’s not called Jack Breakfast. Despite the name change, that elements that make up a great Breakfast/Bell story have not changed. First and foremost, Jack is a sparse strategist of prose. He never ever gives away too much or too little. He allows the reader to intimate stuff about his characters – what they look like, where they live, what they eat – and that stuff is almost as fascinating as what we actually find out about. In Sarasota, a girl pursues a shy pre adolescent. In Dawn, a boy by the name of Dawn gets a wedgie, then has a sexual encounter with a girl named Andy. If you wrote your life down on a piece of paper, it would be simple. But it isn’t. It isn’t really. And that’s what Breakfast does – he makes us realize how far from simple we’ll always be. (HN)
chapbook, $2, Jack Breakfast, 875 Eglinton Ave. W., PO Box 85504, Toronto, ON, M6C 4A8