an impalpable certain rest

by Jeff Bursey

In the gloom of marginal lives, the haunted men and women of an impalpable certain rest are menaced by and fighting against the corrosive power of illusions and their own half-understood natures.

Apart from the intensity of these psychologically oppressive stories and their provocative, unsettling effect, what most astonishes in this collection are the intermittent, unexpected flashes which could be hope or delusion.

"It’s horrifying and funny and completely engaging." –Gabriel Blackwell

Genres: Short Stories, Canada

324 pages, Paperback

Published June 3, 2021

About the author

Jeff Bursey is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright and literary critic.

His books: Verbatim: A Novel (hardcover, October 2010; paperback, February 2018); Mirrors on which dust has fallen (June 2015); Centring the Margins: Essays and Reviews (July 2016); Unidentified man at left of photo (September 2020); an impalpable certain rest (June 2021); Assume A Position: Considerations and Interviews (July 2022).

His webpage is:

www.jeffbursey.ca

Reviews

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I'm a big fan of Mr Bursey's work and I also have a personal interest in this book

OK, now that's out of the way I can sing the praises of this varied collection of stories. Most appear to be concerned with anxiety in various guises and several feature Bursey's distinctive use of dialogue.

Initially I wasn't as keen on some of the later stories but I took a breather and went back to reread them as I'd initially rather rushed through them.

I'm not very good at analysing the details so I'll just say that I liked this collection very much and look forward to whatever Jeff comes up with next

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously I'm not neutral about it.

Neither is my publisher:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz77W...

Two reviewers cited here:

https://miramichireader.ca/2021/09/an...

https://goodreports.net/2021/07/19/an...

[Rick Harsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I babbled out a review here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz77W...

[Nick Voro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: This review is not a true review. It is more of a summary composed of the author’s own words. Call it an enthusiastic proclamation. I leave reviewing to the real reviewers. I am simply sharing my enthusiasm for the work with this summary / prose collage.

*

Certitude

“When they look around with disgust masking incomprehension at how things have changed they pray for the world to return to how they think it once was.”

A tale of once-friends hitting mid-thirties and not doing too well inside. Although, the friendship is up for debate. Debate because, according to the lead character, there isn’t anything reliable in this world. So, while he may remember a-coming-together because of similar hobbies, his detestable treatment within the larger group of friends always remains debatable to how much this friendship was really a friendship and not a classic case of abuse by fellow school peers.

A psychological tale awaits the reader. A tale of resurfacing dislikes. A tale of people distancing and separating and then coming back together stuck in some sort of time warp, but not always for the correct reasons. A tale of complaining and complainers. About somebody who always thinks he is better than somebody else. Comparisons and cutting down. Bitching and bludgeoning. An angry tale and a tale of anger.

“You could be a little nicer.”

But this can apply to every single character in this story. But you won’t be able to look away. You won’t be able to put this book down and you won’t be able to skip this longish tale. No, this one stays. Stays with you as you will stay glued to your seat, unable to look away. Stays with you a long time after you finish reading it. This is how it’s done, folks. A masterful display of a writer in complete control of his pen and his thoughts. A harrowing psychological tale of so-called days of innocence remembered by grown men with foggy memories. A reality desaturation. A friendship that should have ended with “…copper skyscrapers, royal blue dinosaurs, and golden trees.”

The few remaining poker players gathered around a single table playing late into the night waiting on their luck to change, soaked in sweat and desperate having the kind of conversation that goes around and around in a maddening way. No one at that table is a winner, but they grin when a chum fails on a hand. Choices are made, but no one understands the other’s choice. Miscommunication is forever prevalent. Suitcases full of emotional baggage are always near and can easily be unlocked. Think quick, speak quicker. Get wrong ideas and speak out of turn. Suspicion and hatred. Success pitted against unemployment. Failure and square one. Smugness and class distinctions. Condescension. Ego. Education-importance debates. Small-minded exclamations. Ambitious ladder climbing. Discussions or argument? Identity questioning. Provoking/Triggering commentary. Lack of Compassion/Trust/Truthfulness/Principles/Guarantees. Living in cells of their own making, feeling daily, the rotten crawling sensation of a generally miserable existence. Where conversations amongst themselves feel like being lobotomized in stages. Friends we all wish we had. People we all wish to know.

What is your purpose in life, dear reader? A question the main character once asked himself.

***

Charm

Noise from parties travels down the stairway, keeping Lana and Jack from nights of much needed sleep. A knock on the noisy upstairs neighbors’ door brings the music down but also amplifies the loud voices complaining about the couple downstairs that don’t know how to cohabit. A characterization occurs by people Lana and Jack do not know. Then the next party, and the next turning up of the music, and more characterizations, mutterings and go f yourselves. “...relations deteriorated into daytime stereo wars.” Vibrations, sound traveling down, music accompanied by shouting, by voices edged and rising, constant pacing of angry feet forever locked in confrontation. Fights tinged heavily with blood and despair. Slammed doors and smashed plates, beeps of the microwave and roar of the television.

“I can suggest is that when it happens, just grin and bear it.”

A relatable story to every reader out there, including yours truly, locked in a never-ending legal battle with his own uncaring and selfish neighbors upstairs. Nearly three years later, countless written letters, phone calls with lawyers for the management and still I can hear them. Can you hear your own noisy neighbors, dear readers? Well, if you can’t, you are lucky. Enjoy your sleep, while the rest of us grit our teeth and put in earplugs to cancel out the noise. 

***

Reliance

A story of Doris, a seventeen-year-old with ambitions of joining a dancing troupe living with a boyfriend her mother Sharon does not approve of. Or is it their unwed status that bothers her more? Displeasure and coolness. A mother wanting her daughter to stop dreaming her life away. A daughter that just wants to get away from her mother. A cautionary tale of the extremes a mother is willing to go to when she believes she is right. A mother always knows best… or so it goes.

***

The Island

A man is alone on a small island after his ship goes down. After learning how to survive, he feels the loneliness of a man for company other than the sky and the sea, longing for a life no longer his.

He dreams of a delightful apparition, a woman beckoning him. Illusions were of little strength and no permanence. But what if he could make the apparition a reality?

A cutting cautionary tale of a Robinson Crusoe type fashioning a woman in his mind and uprooting some serious consequences.

***

Fugue

During an especially miserable English winter, in a ferociously crowded car, commuters sway and stagger as the subway moves too fast, or too sluggishly imprisoning them, the air always poisonous, a disgusting sulfurous mass. In one of these sweltering rocking and stalled cars, four passengers intersect.

An older, recently retired stockbroker trying to close one last philandering deal, his blind wife who casts suspicions with acuteness unimpaired by blindness, the beautiful young red-haired girl who is the beneficiary of the stockbroker’s conspiratorial winks and wandering eyes and lastly the fly on the wall, a visiting Canadian laborer who is a witness to this messy publicly displayed love triangle. Although he eventually forfeits the role of a mere spectator and becomes a full-fledged player.

What one sharp look can do by an individual who feels his partner is straining him daily. What emotional and physical distancing can do to a wife who depends on her husband and now finds herself completely in isolation. What the reciprocations of that look can do. And just who the onlooker might be voyeuristically taking it all in. Four lost souls trailing off into a trembling inner silence as the wheels screech to a halt at the next station.

***

White Night

Dark dreams. Interrupted sleep. Middle of the night walks. Gregory is awake. Grudgingly. Not of his own accord. His wife Danielle cannot sleep. She can never sleep.

“I’m going for a walk, to tire myself, I’ll be back…”

Sleeplessness gripped her, haunted by her past. Forever a victim of her memories. Something Gregory never understood, not then and not now. In fact, he understands nothing at 2:30AM, and yet there she is, going outside in the middle of the night not fearing being mugged, raped or murdered. This is his wife.

But what can be done? Gregory takes the safety chain down and outside they go.

“…a woman, half-lurching, half-stiff-legged, shambling forward with a surly man in her wake, his face averted from her as much as possible.”

And thus ensues a battle of wills. Memories assail both, as each pursues the other, or something else beyond at a relenting quickened pace while the reader reads on, unnerved and thrilled, simultaneously, wishing only for the couple to slow down, to come to a full stop, to connect via direct communication.

Pause. Listen. Do you hear the echo of their footsteps outside?

***

Night Attack

Melissa and Daniel are on the run. Planes thunder overhead with their crimson mouths gleaming bloody with a set of jagged teeth. They want Melissa and Daniel. But will they get them? And where is Melissa’s aunt? She has disappeared. Did they get to her? And who are They?

Will Melissa and Daniel escape the Nightmare? Will you, dear reader?

***

The Frequency of Alarm

The Lieutenant follows an unfamiliar trail hacked out by the enemy, defeated now, a time for diplomacy and negotiations. She walks alone, a lone figure wrapped in thoughts. Beyond the bombed horizon. She is a communications officer tasked with monitoring communications on radio bands, both a receiver of enemy broadcasts and as a booster for the transmissions from Central. Now she has a duty to entice the civilians to accept the new hardships a treaty would introduce.

The war is over. The remaining, a skeletal crew. She feels the uselessness of her position. The end is near. Inglorious and without decorations, back home a discharged officer in a country of disgruntled civilians suffering the domestic fatigue of war. She wanted a promotion. Advancement. More combat.

But the brass wants everything to be dismantled and the personnel to ship out. She awaits the signed letter confirming this. Two things are on her mind. A phantom noise she’s heard across the airwaves. A whisper. A hissing, like air out of a tire, except with words in it. A fugitive noise. A ghost. And the mysterious sign she discovered on her walk through the forest and out by the ramps leading to the highway. A warning. DO NOT ENTER TRESPASSERS WILL BE PUNISHED.

She concentrates on the puzzles before her. Biding her time. Knowing once she leaves, she will never return.

***

A Torch Did Touch His Heart, Briefly

Another never-finished letter addressed to Juliet Stevenson. A far-off love. She created lust where there was none before her. Her tender gaze awakened an erotic charge.

“I first saw myself as this... heartless man, this sexually inactive - no, be blunt - sexually incapable and uninterested man.”

The protagonist is confessing. Getting to the details. A researcher with a degree in library sciences. He knows how to do this. Learning the tips of things, the fascinating and the mundane. We bear witness to this confession.

He reveals that he is fond of theatre. Wrapped in the sublime power of it. He feels at home there. Yet, he considers it less art than mere entertainment. Less a play and more of a show. Except for Juliet. She is art. Juliet is an actress, in both movies and plays. The difference to him, is that she embodies her characters. Makes them real. Much more than a typical actress. She can incarnate spite, envy, fury, love, desperation, longing and passion! His heart is hers. He belongs to her. She becomes a part of him, even if she is unaware of his existence.

“I’ve chosen not to have partners, except for a few meaningless relationships here and there. I couldn’t force myself to be attracted to anyone for long...” / “Actresses are safe to crave.”

So much is alien to him, so much he will never feel. But he is feeling. He has feelings for Juliet Stevenson. The woman on television. The woman up on a stage. The woman performing for him, for others. The woman that was out of reach. But that’s just what he wants. To reach out. To be comforted. To be held.

Or does he?

***

A Livid Loneliness

She is alone. Her spirit is weak as she unpacks her suitcase trying to dispense with her past, finally reaching this idyllic land she longed for all her life.

“From childhood she had memorized charts and graphs on waterfalls and dry seasons, learned names of trees and flowers, studied the native language, assimilated every piece of knowledge available in order to build a future. She understood everything but was completely unfamiliar with the place.”

She tries to ease into this tropical life, staying in a hotel for a month and a half off-season and on dwindling money. The creeping paralysis is always present. The constant terror and ever present knowledge that she is so painfully alone. The hotel clerk she meets fingering her wedding sitting ring alone at the bar staves off some of the loneliness and thoughts of her ex-husband.

She levels with him. Tells him of a, “A half-life, that’s what I know, half-measures, pleasant moments, but I’ve never been happy.” Introduces him to her hopeless world in need of healing and hope. Will he help her? Can he? Paradise or Purgatory. A spirit on the verge of giving up or finding peace.

***

What in Me is Dark, Illumine

Martin looks at paintings. Drained paintings exhausted by thousands of eyes and monographs, articles, books, and studies. Now a void exists, held in place by slight brackets of wood. He stares, horrified, into the abyss. Then he can’t help himself and starts shouting. Tearing the fabric of the afternoon apart. A dinner party awaits him later that evening. He is the talk of the town, or rather his outburst at the gallery. The room bends in, rippling, wallpaper sags, exposing damp rot, paint peels off the ceiling. Will Martin make it through the evening entangled in obscure conversations, barely staying upright in a world bending in on itself.

***

This book has eight ratings on GoodReads. This book deserves better. Without a doubt, Jeff Bursey deserves more. More sales, a wider audience, to be read. This is a fine collection. There is nothing to skip here, and it deserves your time and attention. The psychological elements, the dark humour, the explorations of characters who aren’t mere cardboard cutouts, there’s depth, there’s tragedy and it all scarily resembles real life. Captured all too accurately. True to life yet remaining a work of fiction.

Now do yourself a favor and get a copy of this magnificent achievement.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m no more going to apologize for lack of objectivity in a review of Jeff Bursey’s book than I am in any other: none of them are objective! It’s all a matter of taste and perspective; opinion and preference; my shit and your shit. This is my shit. While I am lucky to count Bursey as a friend outside of GR, it is immaterial to the work. If I thought it was terrible I just wouldn’t have even put it on here.

Of course, this is anything but terrible (see those sweet 5 stars above). While there’s a thematic unifier that varyingly connects each story herein, determining what that theme may be is very much up to the reader. For me, it’s largely the way that people inflict themselves onto other people, the psychic espionage of the interpersonal gambit. But the centerpiece here, “Fugue,” is the one that’ll most stay with me. Taking place on a series of tube rides around rotten ol’ London Town, it is as much a graceful, balletic orchestration of physical space as maneuvered by its four primaries as it is a catalogue of horrifics and minor heroics. The manipulation of visibility, space, and interpersonal exchange, substantive exchange, is masterful and betrays a predilection toward the humane (thank goodness). It, like the earlier “Reliance,” is also absolutely fucking heartbreaking. No, not all of it is, though none of it is fit for the Self-Help section, either. But those two…Christ…people are just the worst kind of people, you know?

Jefe obviously does. Poor insightful bastard.

* * * * *
(Disclaimer bullshit: Bursey did not send me this book nor ask me for a review/opinion. I paid my own money to buy the Kindle version that I stumbled across on Amazon. It was $7.50 as of the time of this writing, and if you can’t support your friends, which sometimes we cannot, just make certain you’re not supporting your enemies X)

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come.

[Michael Kuehn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do I thank Jeff Bursey, or berate him for putting me through the gut-wrenching emotional turmoil contained in those stories? Just kidding – I relish gut-wrenching emotional turmoil. That's just me. So, thank you. While there might be some humor lurking here and there amid these tortured lives, it's fleeting, and for the most part, dark. This is real drama in everyday mundane lives, people whose lives, for one reason or another, have spun out of control – and we can't look away (the author has seen to that). As mainstream fiction as the stories might first appear, each has a quirkiness that speaks for Bursey's unique style and tone. A master of dialogue, Bursey juggles multiple conversations with the ease and clarity of Gaddis, it flows, is authentic, and the rawness at times unsettling.

For me, it was the penultimate story, A Livid Loneliness, that really rattled me – powerful stuff.

A volume of unique storytelling, an amazing variety united by a common thread – broken people in a broken world. Read it.

[David]

Jeff Bursey always makes me think. Sometimes I would rather not think about some of what gets into my mind from his books. I suspect this is rather a good thing than the reverse. an impalpable certain rest is a collection of stories mostly focused on people who are not, on the whole, happy; it pursues, sometimes with unanaesthetized verbal surgery, some of the reasons for unhappiness; it does not provide easy answers (or, in most cases, any answers at all, as each individual is precisely that: an individual, not a representative of a group who somehow all share the same characteristics). I found myself recognizing many of the ground situations in these stories, feeling that I had been in similar states sometimes, and could sympathize with the characters I found therein, but usually also feeling (perhaps lying to myself) that I would have made different choices in those situations. One thing I did find unusual about this collection: it moves fast! Jeff Bursey is not, usually, a writer who invites the 'downhill ski' mode of reading. This book doesn't lack for profound moments, but it does seem to move faster than most of his earlier work.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short stories includes characters with mental health problems, couples in fraying or frayed relationships, and situational problems that offer no clear way out or seemingly viable solutions. However, the stories read as problems Bursey set up for his characters as a challenge to find solutions for—whether for the sake of the narrative or his personal life, I don’t know. (I’m assuming something personal is at stake in these stories since they share common concerns and elements.) Because the stories end either ambiguously or badly for the protagonists (due to lack of options), I think the narrative solutions evaded Bursey, and often the characters’ dialogues can be easily re-imagined as the author thinking aloud as he works through the problems. Perhaps this interpretation is all wrong. At any rate, I think that his earlier novel, Unidentified man at left of photo (2020) conveys a naturalness—despite its self-conscious mocking of narrative conventions—that still feels raw in Certain Rest.

[draxtor · Rating 5 out of 5]

DAMN IT this Bursey fella is TOO AWESOME = since I am not a PROFESSIONAL ALL CAPS REVIEWER I will just steal a line I heard somewhere: "he writes like the voice in my head" ... kinda.

A whole bunch of wonderful stories with conflicted, twisted, sweet and BAD people, people YOU KNOW (I know, trust me!) but of course "Fugue" stands out to me - as a musician but also as a public transit dependent person - where a Canadian in London observes a creepy 43 year old, his wife who he rides the subway with daily is blind, basically PICKING UP a young woman UNDER THE (BLIND !!!) EYES of his wife, pretending he has to go see a business colleague after hours.

He knows nice guy Bill (the Canadian) will be his accomplice and deputizes him to WALK HIS WIFE HOME ALL CAPS.

The wife says, after creep gets off at the stop he pretends to meet for biz but actually he and the girl leave the train, in a worried voice: "Did he get off all right?"

Canadian Bill answers, but only to himself: "He got off all right."

Now THAT is great writing although publisher Rick Harsch should have fired the editor for not setting a COMMA in Bill's answer like this: "He got off, all right."

I AM KIDDING!

I LOVE Y'ALL = JEFF, RICK, ALL OF y'ALL!!

PS: the story "Livid Lonliness" is still staying with me after several days. Brutal and beautiful, what can I say. Very real!

[Ian "Marvin" Graye]

PROLEGOMENA TO A REVIEW

The Big Sell

The publisher reveals that, yet again, he published the author's latest work/collection of short stories without reading it beforehand. Yet he puffs the book up, so that we'll buy it from him, read it and vindicate his folly (listen here):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz77W...

The reasons you're supposed to like it are a mystery:

"You might like it. Obviously, the author likes it..."

Hyperblurbole

The publisher declares without any argument or justification (whether objective or subjective) that Bursey and the book "should go on the Canon!" As usual with coterie fodder, "it's a masterpiece". Well that would please both author and publisher.

Independent, discriminating readers are supposed to accept and act on these subjective declarations and five-star ratings from the author's peer group. They're being urged to follow the leader, join the Queue-Anon.

Speaking of Blind Faith (or sight unseen)...


SOUNDTRACK:

Blind Faith - "Can't Find My Way Home"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN1J5...