Product Description

The thirteen provocative stories in A Sharp Tooth in the Fur, Darryl Whetter’s first collection, offer lots of sex, a bit of violence, and a wickedly clever exploration of human nature. Backed into emotional corners, Darryl Whetter’s men are creatures of feckless energy and intermittent idealism. Their fragile relationships break up easily, and men who don’t retreat into pot-fuelled lethargy revert to ambitious self-destruction. Excellent as he is at capturing his characters’ essence, Darryl Whetter is mature enough to view the men in particular, but also the women, with considerable irony. Whetter’s “heroes” are often men in their twenties or thirties, men with little self-knowledge but boundless self-centredness and sexual appetite. The event that propels several stories is the break-up of a marriage, a love affair, or a liaison of convenience. When separation doesn’t inspire pot-induced lethargy, it goads these men to frenzy. Backed into emotional corners, they revert to self-destruction. Sometimes, as in the hilarious “Profanity Issues,” valiantly suppressed rage, shame, and terror erupt at a weird angle, and blind loyalty to an impulsive misjudgement snowballs into weeks of public humiliation. “Non-Violent, Not OK” is an insider’s view of the 2001 Quebec City riot. The central character, Chuck, is encouraged in an abstract sort of way by his lazily liberal prof, equipped by a father who thinks money fixes everything, and armed with pop-psych instructions from a bloodless riot manager. Innocent of ideology, he wanders aimlessly around in the tear gas, offering his Maalox-based eye-spray to friend and foe alike. In “A Sharp Tooth in the Fur,” an ex-couple acts out a highly original sexual fantasy that’s as hilarious as it is shocking. From the classroom to the laundromat, from Paris to the mosquito-infested Ontario bush, Whetter dissects a portion of human experience that has never been so deftly explored, revealing the psyche of the 20-something male.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #637414 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-08
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .57 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.ca
A Sharp Tooth in the Fur, Darryl Whetter's debut collection of short fiction, feels a bit like Russell Smith's Young Men as rewritten by a young, word-drunk Bill Gaston. Most of its stories are indeed about young men. In "Sitting Up," a high school student takes to scratching words into his eczema-disfigured leg, while in "Profanity Issues, S.," a divorced tenure-aspirant spars over the ideology of profanity with his son's principal. Young men mountain-biking, young men stealing their ex-girlfriend's panties, young men seducing famous Indian-Canadian gay novelists: Whetter anatomizes the species in unflinching detail.

Whetter's collection is weakened somewhat by a handful of stories which feel as though they were included simply to create a "balanced" book. While the impulse to include stories in which the protagonist is not an angry young white guy is commendable, some of those attempts feel comparatively tepid. "Enormous Sky White," which alternates between the affairs of Grater, a young tree-planter in backwoods Ontario, and those of his girlfriend, Courtney, who is enjoying a summer term in Paris, is a case in point. Grater's half of the narrative is strikingly vibrant, while Courtney's Gauloises and flings seldom transcend cliché. All of the stories, however, are distinguished by Whetter's prose, which is inventive, precise, and vivid. It's the real star of this sly, smart, and gratifyingly original collection. --Jack Illingworth

Alistair MacLeod
"He frequently places his characters in a personal cul-de-sac, a very brave thing to do. His combination of theme and style is admirable." - Alistair MacLeod

W.H. New, Canadian Literature
"Work marked by a provocative edginess." - W.H. New, Canadian Literature