One Man's Trash

Ryan Vance
Lethe Press

Short stories are the perfect format for tales of the unexpected. From the supernatural side of Robert Louis Stevenson, through the ghost stories of Edith Wharton and Alison Lurie, to recent outstanding uncanny collections from Kirsty Logan and Helen McClory, it seems that the form lends itself to the short sharp shocks that are at the dark heart of other-worldly accounts.

Ryan Vance’s collection One Man’s Trash is a welcome addition to the genre, not just creating his own myths and legends, but adapting and updating classics. The story that gives the book its name, ‘One Man’s Trash’ reads like an update of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, with themes of vanity, obsession and self-destruction, as the charismatic and corrupting Otto uses his charms to make his way through life with as little personal cost as he can manage, and scant regard for others.

It’s the perfect introduction to Vance’s unusual world, which also references Greek mythology, alien invasion, Frankenstein and other assorted gods and monsters, all brought bang up to date in terms of subject and setting. There’s the dangers of genetic mutations in ‘Babydog’ where one man’s potential happiness is tied up with another’s madness, the problems faced when an immortal creature finds it is no longer made for these times (‘Asterion’), the dangers of virtual reality that is all too real (‘Love In The Age Of Operators’—where deleting your browsing history is the least of your worries), the all too prescient post-plague world of ‘Gold Star’, and the possibilities that are offered by other worlds (‘The Offset and the Calving’).

The stories are an attack on the senses, and it is almost overwhelming at times. Sights, sounds, smells, touch, and particularly taste are all stimulated as you read, with the writing describing in detail what the characters are experiencing far more than what they are thinking. ‘Mouthfeel’ sees the promise of a night of fine-dining and new sensations as torture for the dysgeusic Nathan until his evening takes an unexpected twist, and if you don’t recoil at the description of how to make a ‘Rat King’, and its potential uses (‘Mischief’), you have stronger sensibility than me.

But these stories are not sensational for the sake of it. Ryan Vance is using the details and the devils in his writing to comment on modern living, especially concerning relationships and other distinctly human connections. It’s not simply the stories themselves, but they way they are told and unfold. One Man’s Trash is a collection of stories that are thoroughly modern while remaining strangely familiar.

—Alistair Braidwood