Suffering of All Sorts

Readers be warned: Burn Man is not for the faint of heart. The grim stories in this collection will not counter the darkness of our present moment, but they will command attention, for there is much to admire in Mark Anthony Jarman’s work. This is a writer who possesses stylistic mastery and an ability to evoke character and incident using the barest of details. His are inimitable protagonists — wounded and nameless men with a gift for irony and humour — who inhabit haunting worlds.

Jarman is an award-winning author who teaches creative writing at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was influenced by Barry Hannah, a “wild” prose writer from Mississippi. Hannah’s imagination —“calibrated to the short burst”— certainly aligned with Jarman’s aesthetic. Several prominent writers have noticed Jarman’s technical virtuosity. A. S. Byatt gave him high praise for work that is “brilliant,�...