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Hair Hat
What exactly is a hair hat? That's a question faced by many different people in Hair Hat , a debut book of delicately wrought stories by Waterloo-based writer Carrie Snyder. In these 11 spare tales, each of the central characters encounters a mysterious man with a mysteriously shaped head. At first, he is seen only from a in the opening story "Yellow Cherries," a troubled young girl visiting her relatives' farm witnesses a meeting between her aunt and a curious-looking travelling salesman. Gradually, the figure comes into sharper focus. In "Queenie, My Heart," the narrator is a homely coffee-shop employee who meets the man when he asks for a large double double. His hair, she notes, "was shaped into a hat. I could not tell you what sort of hat. With hair, it was difficult to say." Apparently so, though yet another narrator--a woman searching for news of her birth mother--later relates more about its tangible qualities. "It felt softer that I'd expected," she notes, "like moss." The title character's drift from the periphery of these stories into the foreground gives Hair Hat an affecting poignancy and an overall sense of coherence. Stories that initially seem too fragmentary--like "Personal Safety Device," in which a university student assesses a variety of suitors--gain greater meaning once the shape of the book is finally revealed. Other pieces--like "Flirtations," about a solipsistic university student who ponders cheating on her boyfriend--remain outside the rubric and end up feeling more like vignettes than fully formed stories. Even so, Snyder's wry, evocative prose yields many remarkable moments, as when one character describes his best friend's girlfriend as having "a face like a bowl of milk." She also generates considerable sympathy for her diverse cast of narrators, many of them young women struggling to understand the complexities of adulthood. None of them, however, are inspired to emulate their new acquaintance's hairstyle. --Jason Anderson
- GenresShort StoriesCanada
213 pages
First published February 13, 2004
About the author
Carrie Snyder
25 books73 followersCarrie Snyder's second book, The Juliet Stories, was a finalist for the 2012 Governor General's Award for fiction. Her first book, Hair Hat, was nominated for a Danuta Gleed Award. Carrie has also won a CBC Literary Award for short fiction (2006). Carrie makes her home in Waterloo, Ontario with her husband, four children, and two dogs. She blogs as Obscure CanLit Mama.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 10, 2019
3.5. Wonderful cast of characters.
July 24, 2020
good book mom
March 5, 2012
Well-executed books of linked short stories such as Century or Hair Hat have the rare power of making the novel look mere. Mere as in only linear, one-dimensional, and narrowly focussed, which is nothing like life or like the world. Whereas the shape of a book of linked stories is like the world, or rather, like the world if it had edges– polyhedronal. Multitudinous sides, perspectives, but only glimpses of these. And so perhaps the novel has the advantage of providing the reader with more satisfaction in its illusion of wholeness, but for the reader who is seeking something a little more true, linked short stories are as close as it gets in fiction.
The stories in Carrie Snyder’s Hair Hat are linked by a man whose hair is cut into the shape of a hat. A creepy cut to ponder, and even someone standing immediately before Hair Hat Man declares the style only “plausible”. Of course, I had to google it, and this guy seems to be the most famous Hair Hat Man on the internet. Carrie Snyder’s Hair Hat Man, however, looks a little different. In fact, he looks a little different to everyone who encounters him, older or younger, shabby or less so, weary or sinister, friend or foe.
“Yellow Cherries” is told from the perspective of a young girl staying with her Aunt, Uncle and cousins while her mother is having a baby. A later story, “Comfort”, is the Aunt’s perspective of the same events, but the events subtly different, calling into question notions of memory, narrative authority and underlines the gulf between what adults and children understand about one another. “Tumbleweed” and “Third Dog” are both stories of motherhood, the first about a mother taking her children on a disasterous beach outing on the day her husband has (perhaps?) left them, and the second a grandmother taking her grandson for a walk one summer day, pondering her daughter’s unhappiness as she relieves her of her maternal duties for a small time. A most vivid moment is the daughter upon their return home, (the narrative is in second person, spoken from granddaughter to grandson): “Give me the baby!” said your mother, running to the back door to greet us. “
It doesn’t take much: the urgent nature of her exclaimation, that she is running, that it’s the backdoor. Snyder uses her materials with such deftness that she almost makes prose look easy, and indeed Hair Hat is a breezy read. But each word, every sentence is weighted, to be considered. Such a wide range of characters, but Snyder is deliberate in showing the different ways that each one speaks.
The narrator of “Harrassment”, for example, who speaks like he’s spouting off, and then we realize he’s erupting. He’s one of several characters who are loners, for whom the Hair Hat Man is a point of connection. Queenie, the obese doughnut shop employee in “Queenie, My Heart” who has just lost her father is another, and on her second encounter with the man, on the subway, the beginnings of a romance are sparked. In subsequent stories, we view this odd pairing from afar, but there is something heartening about their relationship. We’ve only been watching Hair Hat Man from the periphery, observing him as an oddity, but we’re beginning to connect with him too, and he’s somebody we care about.
As the book progresses, we move back and forth in time to get closer to the Hair Hat Man’s story. When we finally encounter him directly, he is so familiar that the hair is plausible, and perhaps the least remarkable thing about him. But still, this is only an extended glimpse. This story “Missing” is from the perspective of his long-lost daughter’s own daughter now grown, given up for adoption and now returned to find him, Hair Hat Man, her grandfather. “I should have brought along a camera. I should have asked a passerby to take a photograph of the three of us. Next time, I thought. But next time is so rare. It’s a hummingbird in the rose bushes: blink and its possibility is gone.”
Not so much for a book, however, for like Century, Hair Hat is a book that begs for rereading. Unlike Century, it is also a book that I would have found my way to, even if not for Patricia Storms’ recommendation. Carrie Snyder’s book with its distinctive cover had been turning up before me increasinly often of late– at the library, at the Eden Mills Festival in September at The New Quarterly booth where I entered a draw to win it but didn’t win. Carrie Snyder had stories published in the most recent TNQ as well, and I was excited to read more of her work once I’d finished reading them.
The stories in Carrie Snyder’s Hair Hat are linked by a man whose hair is cut into the shape of a hat. A creepy cut to ponder, and even someone standing immediately before Hair Hat Man declares the style only “plausible”. Of course, I had to google it, and this guy seems to be the most famous Hair Hat Man on the internet. Carrie Snyder’s Hair Hat Man, however, looks a little different. In fact, he looks a little different to everyone who encounters him, older or younger, shabby or less so, weary or sinister, friend or foe.
“Yellow Cherries” is told from the perspective of a young girl staying with her Aunt, Uncle and cousins while her mother is having a baby. A later story, “Comfort”, is the Aunt’s perspective of the same events, but the events subtly different, calling into question notions of memory, narrative authority and underlines the gulf between what adults and children understand about one another. “Tumbleweed” and “Third Dog” are both stories of motherhood, the first about a mother taking her children on a disasterous beach outing on the day her husband has (perhaps?) left them, and the second a grandmother taking her grandson for a walk one summer day, pondering her daughter’s unhappiness as she relieves her of her maternal duties for a small time. A most vivid moment is the daughter upon their return home, (the narrative is in second person, spoken from granddaughter to grandson): “Give me the baby!” said your mother, running to the back door to greet us. “
It doesn’t take much: the urgent nature of her exclaimation, that she is running, that it’s the backdoor. Snyder uses her materials with such deftness that she almost makes prose look easy, and indeed Hair Hat is a breezy read. But each word, every sentence is weighted, to be considered. Such a wide range of characters, but Snyder is deliberate in showing the different ways that each one speaks.
The narrator of “Harrassment”, for example, who speaks like he’s spouting off, and then we realize he’s erupting. He’s one of several characters who are loners, for whom the Hair Hat Man is a point of connection. Queenie, the obese doughnut shop employee in “Queenie, My Heart” who has just lost her father is another, and on her second encounter with the man, on the subway, the beginnings of a romance are sparked. In subsequent stories, we view this odd pairing from afar, but there is something heartening about their relationship. We’ve only been watching Hair Hat Man from the periphery, observing him as an oddity, but we’re beginning to connect with him too, and he’s somebody we care about.
As the book progresses, we move back and forth in time to get closer to the Hair Hat Man’s story. When we finally encounter him directly, he is so familiar that the hair is plausible, and perhaps the least remarkable thing about him. But still, this is only an extended glimpse. This story “Missing” is from the perspective of his long-lost daughter’s own daughter now grown, given up for adoption and now returned to find him, Hair Hat Man, her grandfather. “I should have brought along a camera. I should have asked a passerby to take a photograph of the three of us. Next time, I thought. But next time is so rare. It’s a hummingbird in the rose bushes: blink and its possibility is gone.”
Not so much for a book, however, for like Century, Hair Hat is a book that begs for rereading. Unlike Century, it is also a book that I would have found my way to, even if not for Patricia Storms’ recommendation. Carrie Snyder’s book with its distinctive cover had been turning up before me increasinly often of late– at the library, at the Eden Mills Festival in September at The New Quarterly booth where I entered a draw to win it but didn’t win. Carrie Snyder had stories published in the most recent TNQ as well, and I was excited to read more of her work once I’d finished reading them.
September 27, 2015
What a strange and interesting book. First off I think I enjoyed this book a little more because it took place not only in Canada, but in areas I've been to myself.
The short stories felt like I was peaking through the kitchen window, and just seeing snippets of people's lives, never seeing how the story ends.
The Element that made the book most enjoyable was the story of the Hair Hat Man and his Daughter Leigh-Ann. How each short story had a little more insight into their story, the before and after. I really do wish we could've found out what happened to Leigh-Ann in the end, but at least we know why he has a hair hat.
The short stories felt like I was peaking through the kitchen window, and just seeing snippets of people's lives, never seeing how the story ends.
The Element that made the book most enjoyable was the story of the Hair Hat Man and his Daughter Leigh-Ann. How each short story had a little more insight into their story, the before and after. I really do wish we could've found out what happened to Leigh-Ann in the end, but at least we know why he has a hair hat.
September 25, 2013
Sweet, endearing stories. I feel like this author can read my mind, and then translate it into much more eloquent terms. Lovely.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews