Why You Should Read Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

“Her loving him and him being well don’t seem to get on at all… And now they would get nothing but ruination.”

I do not think it is an understatement that of all the books I have read pertaining to Canadian culture, Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club is the most important. It is a slap in the face we all of us deserve.

“Smile. Smile for your money. Or starve.”

Within the general consciousness, there are certain understood exclusions for Canadians.

While all societies organized around patriarchy have a pervasive rape culture (and numerous issues around toxic masculinity), Canadians, in particular, do not admit there is anything nefarious about our country. Pick a pervasive cultural problem. We’re actually doing better than everyone else; I guarantee it. And we like to keep our dirty laundry indoors, thank you very much, as opposed to the other places that hang them out for all to see. Gross. Can’t they keep things in-house?

One of the problems with this is that our boys grow up in a world where they simultaneously know rape culture exists but are also removed from it. They’re in a protective bubble. This problem — actually all societal problems, really — are not inherently Canadian, and so we hold ourselves above them. That is mostly America, isn’t it? That doesn’t happen here. Or if it does, certainly not as much. We are well more along in dealing with it then they are, at least.

“She has learned to abuse herself in a misguided attempt at thwarting expectation.”

Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club disabuses readers of this.

Billed as “Blistering Newfoundland Gothic for the 21st century,” the ways in which the majority of boys are enabled and educated by our culture to perpetually prioritize their needs while viewing women as creatures to be conquered and colonized take center stage.

Not boys, in general, specifically Canadian boys from Newfoundland. No looking away this time; sorry! Obfuscation is not an option. It just isn’t. There is not even cloud cover to take shelter from here, I’m afraid.

Jumping from past to present the actions of men — from microaggressions and manipulations to rape — to women, are examined and splayed out before everyone such that no reader can look away.

While the majority of the story is on Iris, a young waitress at a faux upscale restaurant, the narrative jumps around quite often to others in the community. First as an introduction. Then as a way of illustrating how everything ties together in terms of the actual events that take place, but also as a way of communicating the complicity of a community and the role each person plays in a toxic culture.

“Her body was built for fucking but her heart was not. It was built for that other thing that eludes her. This was perhaps the great tragedy of her person. Her external structure does not elicit the desired internal response in men.”

The writing is suffused with indignation that is equal parts scathing and insightful, at times very reminiscent of the prose of McCarthy, specifically those found in Blood Meridian. Clearly Megan Gail Coles writes how she wants to write. She alters the typical structure of the book, discarding quotations and typical punctuation, then buries herself in the minds of characters and wills it all out. There is nothing quite like this out there.

“Just joking with ya, b’y.
He said this readily in an unmistakable smirking way. But everyone knew he was never just joking. Not even a little bit joking. The claim provided him cover to make asinine remarks at everyone. He cloaked himself in a facade sense of humour cape, draped it over his own shoulders and across his face with every barb he sent into the world. If shots were not met with uncomfortable laughter, Rog advised any human hurt to get a sense of humour. Like his. This was just another coded way of saying once again that the hurt man, any hurt man, was like a woman.
Blow that whistle he did.
Our jokester felt certain being like a woman was the worst way to be and slandered them all female.”

It is as though she can walk up to a person and see or hear their innermost thoughts and transcribe them without any thoughts of comfort. It is, at times, completely terrifying how exacting she can verbalize and see the shame and confusion and doubt and pain of a person.

While the story itself is about Iris going to pick up her paycheque on Valentine's Day from the restaurant but instead gets roped into working with her boss, who she is carrying on an affair with, and his wife. When a snowstorm hits, nature brings out uncomfortable truths; and fallout ensues, of course.

“…He continued to share his trauma around like orange slices. One for you. One for you. One for me. In this way he still retained the entire piece of fruit harboured inside bodies he inhabited.”

But more than that, privilege itself is addressed; covering white men, gay men, white women, indigenous women, and more. And poverty — a major issue in the Maritimes — cleverly ties together all of these seemingly loose threads.

By the end, you will be convinced that Megan Gail Coles has your number. Not only does she convey the cultural landscape of Newfoundland, but also realizes each of these people so completely they feel unique and vibrant, but also, somehow, they are stand-ins for people you have met before, or now know.

“Stay alive long enough to buy new jeans…
That’s what the economy wanted. Not for him to thrive. Find some kind of peace. Or gather up a fistful of happiness. It was not in the market’s interest to keep him alive for the right reasons. And his human worth was sold back to him as such.”

The style of writing is something else. It adapts to each character with alternate colloquialisms, spelling errors, and inflections. Within these unique voices she just now has humanized and made you empathize with, the author begins to unfold in excruciating detail and precision, just how sociopathic our society is. The things they do are given secret captions for the reader, telegraphing why they treat each other how they do.

Actually, you know these things she’s saying already; you just never actually say them and probably try to push them from your mind altogether when you can.

“But knowing something and facing it is altogether different.”

And that’s the point, of course!

They are people who mess up and try and fail and don’t even try to hurt people sometimes — but they are also appendages of society performing their preprogrammed function.

Pulling off the monumental, this outright condemnation of our way of life manages to be surprisingly humanizing and thoughtful and caring, even as it spares absolutely no one. It is a magnum opus on trauma and harm and love, and refuses to neither scapegoat nor give permission to any character to treat each other the way they do.

“John would cry atop her womb when she attempted autonomy of thought.”

It is a profoundly good work, the truest sense of the word.

And it is exactly what Canada needs to hear right now.

Canadians for too long have patted ourselves on the back for being better than anyone else, certainly America, citing various statistics regurgitated by ad campaigns from former elections and governmental administrations. Patently false claims we use to bolster ourselves and place us apart.

The truth is Canada participates in society. Has a lot of self-examining to do, responsibility to claim. While it takes place in Newfoundland, this could be anywhere in Canada, really.

The marginalized find no shelter here. No safety. This book rips away the illusion we’ve come to prefer. A misdirection that has lasted far too long.

You should read Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club.

You’re in it.

“Hard to say who is most or worst hurt when you treat people like nothing.
The fallout is catastrophic.”