Better Living Through Plastic Explosives

Better Living through Plastic Explosives is a collection of short stories by Zsusi Gartner. Better Living through Plastic Explosives is on the 2011 Giller Prize short list.

Summer of the Flesh Eater

The men in this short story remind me of the women of Wisteria Lane a la the popular television show Desperate Housewives. Told through a third-person group narrative, a group of Fraiser Crane-like men living in an upscale Vancouver cul-de-sac suffer through a summer of dealing a new neighbour they deem uncivilized. The new neighbour wears cut-off t-shirts, drinks beer from the can, and fixes cars in his drive way, standard stuff but to these 'evolved' men he's practically a neanderthal. In reality the new neighbour is really just a thinly veiled stereotype of the typical man as depicted in prime time circa 2003 (think According to Jim  and King of Queens).

Once, We Were Swedes
Alex is a retired journalist who now teaches a journalism class at a Vancouver community college. She's married to a man who's six years older than her, but as the story progresses their aging processes go into overdrive in opposite directions (sort of like the Brad Pitt movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). By the end of the story, Alex is an old woman with dentures and mobility issues and her husband is a teenager. The title comes from the IKEA language they use to speak in happier times.

Floating Like a Goat
This long, run-on letter from a mother to her daughter's grade one art teacher is sooo entertaining. I wish I had the courage to write a letter like that to my kids' teachers when they implement classroom rules that don't vibe with my way of thinking. The title comes from one of the the rules the art teacher sets for her students: when drawing animals and people, their feet must touch the ground.

Investment Results May Vary

“Is it so terrible to want what you can’t have?" Dan and Patricia O'Donnell have it all. They are a beautiful, well-off couple who insist on having the best of everything. Nina is an angry basement dweller who works as a Vancouver Olympic mascot. Honey Fortuna is a real estate agent who's worked very hard for her successful, always keeping a stiff upper lip no matter what's dealt her. Homes are being swallowed by the mountain in Vancouver's ritzy north shore (no humans or animals have been harmed). Nina kidnaps the O'Donnells' young son.

The Adopted Chinese Daughters' Rebellion
A majority of the couples on a well-to-do cul-de-sac in Vancouver adopt female babies from China and set out to raise them with Chinese cultural values. They go from the mild to the ridiculous in this satire of what many couples have done over the years. Eventually they cause the Chinese daughters so much misery, they (and the one natural daughter on the cul-de-sac) run away one night.

What are We doing Here?
Deirdre (Didi) is a young twentysomething NOW reporter on an awkward date with a much older, almost-famous photographer she interviewed for a story. The date take places at his 14th floor apartment, where he's grilling steaks and making baked potatoes. Didi is extremely bored; when the photographer invited her over, she thought she'd be attending a party with his famous friends. Her mind keeps running on to the wild party she attended the night before as she tries to muster the courage to ask the photographer "What are we doing here?"

Someone is Killing the Great Motivational Speakers of Amerika
A motivational speaker and mother takes her followers and her kids to the woods to avoid succumbing to the same fate as many of her motivational peers. During the camping trip she observes her control of her flock loosening and contemplates walking barefoot on hot coals to bring them back under her control. She also muses about the various ways the other motivational speakers disappeared or passed on.

Mister Kakami
Patrick Kakami is a filmmaker going through a midlife crisis. During a photo shoot on a remote Vancouver island, Kakami goes missing. Syd, the film's producer and Kakami's only friend, journeys through a dense Vancouver forest in search Kakami.


We Come in Peace
Five angels from biblical times take over the bodies of five Vancouver teenagers (four boys and one girl) so they can experience what it is to be human. Their actions while in the bodies change the course of the kids' lives forever.

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives
The title of the story, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, is a play on DuPont's advertising slogan "Better Living Through Chemistry." In this story a 'recovering terrorist' is now married, raising a son and attending group sessions with other recovering misfits.

3/5

Next up: The Antagonist