Saddle Up

Readers of Richard Kelly Kemick’s eccentric, wide-ranging debut story collection may find themselves torn between admiration and agitation. What unites the eleven tales in Hello, Horse, rather than a genre, a location, or a set of characters, is an attitude: smirking cynicism. While Kemick’s tonal through line offers sharp wit and perceptive commentary on the absurdities of life, it can also come at the expense of his characters’ interiority.

From frigid Yellowknife to pastoral Prince Albert and onward to urban Tallahassee — where the “uncountable streetlights glowed like all of heaven’s haloes”— angsty teens and ice fishermen and racetrack gamblers encounter scenarios both realistic (political scandals and teen pregnancies) and surreal (dystopian futures and talking dogs). Behind many of Kemick’s stories lies a postmodern sense of ironic detachment, a mordant humour that sometimes pairs uneasily with his earnest insights into the human...