Sealskin

by Tyler Keevil

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 hitchhiker on his way down Mount Seymour. A young man finds a temporary haven on the ice barge where he works. In this collection of award-winning stories, Tyler Keevil uses the rugged landscape of Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet—where the city meets the mountains and civilization meets the wild—as a backdrop for characters struggling against the elements, each other and themselves. Written in a lean, muscular style, these are stories awash in blood and brine, and steeped in images of freedom and confinement.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

198 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2014

About the author

Tyler was raised in Vancouver, Canada. He first came to the UK in 1999 to study English at Lancaster University. He returned home to finish his degree, and after graduating undertook a variety of bizarre jobs, working as a treeplanter, a landscape gardener, a deckhand on a fishing barge, a ‘greenhorn’ in the shipyards, a restaurant busser and a kayak shop assistant. After paying back his student loan, and saving up some money, he moved to Prague to try his hand at being a starving writer – the only problem being that he didn’t know how to write yet. The money ran out before he learned, and after a brief stint living in Birmingham, he moved to Wales in 2003.

While working part-time cleaning toilets at a petrol station, Tyler committed to learning the craft, and after picking up a handful of short fiction awards – including a Writer of the Year Award from Writers Inc. of London – he began selling his stories to magazines. He is interested both in literary and slipstream fiction, and has been published in New Welsh Review, Planet, Transmission, Dream Catcher, Black Static, and On Spec, among others. A translation of his story, ‘Masque of the Red Clown’ has also recently been commissioned by the French-Canadian magazine, Solaris. Tyler has also written for the screen; a short film he wrote recently aired on ITV Wales, whilst another picked up the Welsh Dragon Award at the Newport International Film Festival. Welsh editors have always been supportive of his writing, from Arthur Smith to Dafydd Prys to Francesca Rhydderch to Helle Michelson, and now more recently Lucy Llewellyn at Parthian.

Like most Canadians, Tyler enjoys his winter sports, including hockey and snowboarding, but since coming to Wales he has discovered the wonders of hiking and camping – particular along the Pembrokeshire coast. He currently works part-time in a factory near his hometown of Llanidloes, and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire.

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll be honest, when I first picked this book up I wasn't expecting a whole lot. Usually I find collections like this a little dry, forced and unrealistic. But Keevil has surprised me. Each story is not only believable but emotionally raw and gritty, embracing the stunning and beautiful setting of Burrard Inlet. The stories may not seem like much when you first read them but as your mind digests them something changes and their beauty and elegance comes to the fore. I particularly liked 'Carving Through Woods on a Snowy Evening' which describes a mountain rescue of a snowboarder gone missing and the feeling of the rescuer as he follows the carves laid down by the man he's searching for. I also liked 'Sealskin' with its raw and dramatic events and nature embracing, freedom finding finale. I will certainly be looking out for more of Keevil's work in future.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was previously published in the UK as Burrard Inlet; this is the new Locarno Press edition. A collection of stories, almost all set in North Vancouver, which provide facets of the narrator's experience in a variety of work settings. This is almost all about men -- there are very few women in this book, and they're kind of stand-ins. But what this book does well is to showcase a lot of different versions of masculinity in tension or sometimes conflict. The strongest stories to me have the narrator as a university student on a summer job in some declining industrial setting (shipyards, barges) and dealing with aging working-class curmudgeons -- sometimes unionized workers, sometimes fiercely non-union -- and having to navigate that political environment. At one point I found myself thinking the narrator's voice didn't feel quite authentic, but then it hit me that this is actually appropriate: I remember being in these same situations in my 20s, and having to construct my own voice very carefully to try to fit in (and minimize conflict) in these same work situations: in my case, pulp mills and construction sites, but with the same kind of broken, aging guys who late industrialism hasn't been good to. And as such, I think this is a pretty damn good book; there's a lot here, and I certainly recognized myself in it. (Full disclosure: I know the publisher, and he handed me this copy.)

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sparkling book of short stories told with harsh clarity and vivid honesty. Honesty? This is fiction. Maybe the word I am reaching for is authenticity, or maybe truth. It is a book where hard work on the edge of the water is held with some esteem or even reverence. These characters are real people, whose brief stories ache with life and the harsh light of day.
The Miriam Toews quote on the cover is "Beautiful writing . . . stunning"
I happen to agree.

I begin my list of favourites with
"Carving Thru The Woods On A Snowy Evening"and
"The Art Of Shipbuilding" ... "Snares",
"Scalped" ... All the stories, really have something unique to offer.

[Rubery Book Award · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tyler Keevil’s style is deceptively simple, masculine and raw, but deeply authentic. The stories are set in Vancouver and the characters are ordinary people, carrying out their lives on or by the water, against a background of snow-topped mountains. These are people whose work is often hard and grinding, inevitably at the mercy of the elements. There is great beauty here, with the brutal energy of landscape and emotion, all steeped in cold and sea and weather.

Rubery Book Award

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I connected with this book. That's about the highest praise I can think of.

[Ross Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

In classic, storybook fashion, I came across this signed copy of Tyler Keevil’s ‘Burrard Inlet’ in a bookshop in York. Being a short story writer myself (with a focus on short story cycles for my PhD), and with Keevil having been a creative writing lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire, where I attained both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, I felt almost dutybound to read this collection.

All that being said, reading this collection was far from a mundane or obligatory assignment – ‘Burrard Inlet’ is one of the best, most moving, and truest collections of short stories I have read. It’s little surprise, I think, that it was listed for Wales Book of the Year, nor that it’s dripping in plaudits. To name just a few, the opening and closing stories in the collection, ‘Snares’ and ‘Scalped’ do a fantastic job of bookmarking the enormous range of emotions within the collection’s pages, and I particularly enjoy that we see the return of the same characters throughout the stories; it certainly creates a feeling of completeness, and circularity, but without tying everything up too neatly with a perfect bow.

I feel I should also mention another story in the collection, ‘Sealskin’ – winner of the Journey Prize, both brilliant and disturbing in its portrayal of real-life emotion, and how the truth bubbles to the surface in violent and unexpected ways. Without giving too much away, the sealskin itself is beautiful and distressing, and I was uncertain exactly how I felt about it more than once throughout the story, which I thought was superb. Bravo.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend loaned me his copy of Sealskin after we discussed Legend of a Suicide--a collection of stories by David Vann that I read earlier this year.

While the two authors do not write similarly (Keevil's style is far more lean, for one), both offer a study of isolation, vulnerability, connections (chosen, not chosen, often tentative but not always shakeable), and self-awareness--all of which struggle under the constraints of masculinity. All of these things kind of expand and constrict in the characters. And the stories in both collections feel "wild" in their physical settings as well as in the fierce actions and discoveries that take place within them.

In Keevil's characters, discovery and/or self-awareness works almost like a balloon that's slowly, steadily inflating albeit with sharp objects that lurk nearby. The stories took shape similarly. They started fairly quietly, grew measuredly and by the end loomed very large in my thoughts, recognition and appreciation.

As a reader, I also found it extra rewarding to recognize the Vancouver, North Vancouver and Burrard Inlet in Keevil's stories, having finally spent some time in British Columbia last spring. ("Burrard Inlet" is the title of the first edition, UK, 2014.)

[Marija · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved that these stories centered around the places I find familiar in Vancouver and surroundings; it gave each story an added personal connection for me. The short stories themself were full of dynamic characters, uncomfortable/taboo emotions, and be warned some were even violent. They were all unique bites to devour though and I am happy to have met the characters scattered throughout and see how they might intertwine. A lovely read overall though it did leave me wishing for a little bit more at the end and at times I found the stories to be confusing and less enjoyable to live through.

[Scott Steedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, tight, moving coming-of-age stories set in Vancouver, BC. Hemingway, Richard Ford would approve

[Becca Louise Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is a real lesson in the craft of literary fiction. 'Sealskin,' in particular, is startlingly honest and symbolic. Any aspiring writer should read this collection.

[Phil Della · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to go out of my way to find this book. Even though the author is from the Vancouver, BC area he no longer lives here, and his publisher is from the UK. Nevertheless, he came up on my radar after he wrote a great short story called 'Sealskin', which won the Journey Prize, the award for the year's best short story in Canada. So I had to track down his stuff and read more. I think what I like most about these short stories is that they have a strong sense of place. They are very much stories from North Vancouver. I like the prize story 'Sealskin' for more than that reason though. It's a tale of workplace bullying that goes too far. The discrimination that takes place and the feeling of menace is so compelling, plus the added element of the wild seal added to the sense of a connection with the environment that gave this story its uniqueness. In other stories, I like how the same characters reoccur. Keevil's writing style is straight forward and easy to follow, like you might expect from Hemingway, and he usually follows male protagonists in their work world. It's not filled with crazy people doing stupid things, but there is some of that. In some fiction written by men you can encounter a whole lot of fighting. In here, not so much. There's some drugs used; it is set in Vancouver after all with its marijuana culture, but it's not like every story shows people getting stoned and being idiots. I get the feeling the author really worked these jobs and used them as backdrops for whatever he could come up with to call a story. That's what I'd do. Whatever he did it worked well for him. I liked it.

[Sally Bucknole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't generally read short stories, but after attending a talk by Tyler Keevil, I had to try this out and I loved it. All of the stories are set in one place with some of the characters cropping up in other stories. Tyler read part of Sealskin to us and it was pleasing to read the rest. I was happy with the ending. Some of the endings made you think about how you would finish the story if you had written it. Reading this collection of stories was a new experience for me and I would recommend this as a great read. Thanks Tyler!!

[Gretel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keevil's history of working a wide variety of jobs before becoming a creative writing lecturer has no doubt helped to shape these rugged, masculine stories. Keevil's strengths lie in writing more contemplative, less action-packed stories, with the perspectives from bystanders, such as the brilliant Edges, where a bored ski-resort worker witnesses an abusive relationship between a father and his boy, and in There's a War, where waiters witness a meltdown from a c-list celebrity at their restaurant. Sealskin is reminiscent of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. In Fishhook two boys go fishing and try out different baits - the story is just two boys having a conversation - so simple yet so enthralling. I think Keevil could've done a lot more with his recurring characters, especially with the women of these stories, who feel like afterthoughts.