cover image Whatever Happens

Whatever Happens

Tim Conley, . . Insomniac, $16.95 (176pp) ISBN 978-1-897178-13-3

This debut collection of 19 very short stories combines keenly observed real situations with fantastic and at times surreal touches. Conley veers from neighbors politely fencing verbally over the rope they each intend to hang themselves with, to four guys going to a bar in the company of a talking dog, and over to the dream of an unhappily married painter. Through all of the shenanigans, Conley stays focused on the emotional truths that run through even the shaggiest of his shaggy (or talking) dog stories. Highlights include "Good Faith" (featuring "the usual people... Grant and Yellow and myself"), "Checking" (where a birdbath delicately evokes a brother's drowning) and the touching dinner table exchanges of "A Country Called Roughage." Lovely small perceptions of character balance the funhouse quality of stories, in which women literally fly away and Bellini's Norma is held to be "the greatest opera for the lost." Some of the stories read as mere absurdist sketches or roughed-out concepts, but they come off as earnest experimentation rather than cloying whimsy. The easy intimacy Conley wrests from bewildering situations is marvelous. (Oct.)