Description

Winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Journey Prize Longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, Burrard Inlet is the body of water that divides Vancouver’s North Shore from the rest of the Lower Mainland. In this collection of award-winning stories, Tyler Keevil uses that rugged landscape as a backdrop for characters who are struggling against the elements, each other, and themselves.A search-and-rescue volunteer looks for a missing snowboarder on Christmas Eve; two brothers retreat to the woods to shoot a film in memory of their dead friend; a reclusive forestry worker picks up a hitcher on his way down Mount Seymour; a young man finds a temporary haven on the ice barge where he works. Written in a lean, muscular style, these are stories awash in blood and brine, and steeped in images of freedom and confinement. Within that narrative framework, Burrard Inlet becomes more than a geographical location: it is a liminal space, a boundary and a barrier, a threshold to be crossed.

Publisher Review

'Beneath the deceptively calm surface of these spare and beautiful stories, mad passions boil. There is a transatlantic tradition of studying the interaction between men and nature, in such figures as Hemingway, Carver, McGuane; now Keevil extends and enriches that lineage. He truly is that good.' --Niall Griffiths (author of Grits, Runt, and Kelly & Victor) 'Keevil's "Tokes from the Wild" is an assured story of a city boy who follows his friend into the countryside to spend a summer tree planting, which soon degenerates into a mess of weed smoke and recriminations.' --The Short Review 'Tyler Keevil's "Carving Through Woods on a Snowy Evening" tells of a snowboarder, missing on a mountainside not long after an accident, being tracked by hopeful rescuers. "Carving" has...storytelling rich in symbolism; subtle plot devices; and an ending that opens and sings.' --New Welsh Review 'There's real quality in Tyler Keevil's gripping tale of mountain rescue, "Carving Through Woods on a Snowy Evening".' --The Western Mail 'I read Tyler's amazing story "Sealskin" and was blown away. Beautiful writing...stunning' --Miriam Toews, author of All My Puny Sorrows 'Vividly told in muscular prose, Keevil's stories are compelling evocations of isolation and strength in an often unforgiving landscape.' --Carys Bray, author of A Song for Issy Bradley 'Burrard Inlet is, first and foremost, a collection of short stories that tries to recognise the relationship between humans and nature through separate human identities...This is a piece of work that, without a doubt, should be added to a book-shelf of short-story lovers and novel aficionados alike.' --Wales Arts Review 'The masculine, often unforgiving scenarios which unfold here are a suitable fit for Keevil's economical - if elegant phrasing, but a strong moral core is ever-present, and sometimes vindication for the downtrodden.' --Buzz Magazine '"Sealskin" is a stunner: straightforward and unadorned, but humming with subsurface power. Possessed of a sturdy narrative backbone and unrelenting forward momentum, the story explores familiar themes - alienation, humanity's relationship to nature, coming of age, and loss of innocence - but does so in a way that seems fresh and vibrant. Strong physical details adjoin keen psychological insights, and Keevil handily builds scenes that reverberate with insight and potency. Keevil has accomplished something rare: a story about rough masculinity that brims with emotion and pathos.' --The Journey Prize judges 'Keevil's writing has been compared to Raymond Carver's and I can understand the comparison, although the voice is most definitely his own. As with Carver, Keevil's stories are like ink on wet blotting paper - there's a dense dark core of story arc, spare but telling detail and dialogue, yet around that dense mass is an aureola of implied back narrative and a sense of a continuum past the final full stop.' --CCQ Magazine