Bruce Hunter
a review of

 

Tracie’s Revenge
by Wade Bell
Guernica, 2012
 

From the first paragraph of Wade Bell’s new short story collection, Tracie’s Revenge, I
knew I was reading a gifted writer. Bell’s authenticity and artistry carried me through
darkness and light towards a crescendo in two brilliant final stories.

The second last story, “The Trick”, follows a widowed oilpatch worker testing gas
wells through rattlesnake country. Bell sets his last story, “Papers and Pearls”, in 19th
century New Orleans from the point of view of a steamship captain’s young daughter
who receives from her father a gift of black pearls (think blood diamonds here). When I
finished, I knew Wade Bell was an extraordinary writer whose every book I must read.
He’s too good a writer to ignore.

I spoke with him briefly by telephone for this review. The only child of
American-born parents, Bell was raised in Edmonton. His father was an engineer in the
oilpatch and his mother “a crossword fanatic.” Bell did a brief stint in reform school. “I
became difficult to handle,” he says, with characteristic understatement. He spoke
frankly of a 26 year struggle with depression and his mother’s suicide. And when I asked
if I could include this, he emphasized, I must: “As a society, we need to talk about these
things.” This understatement, honesty and compassion come through in his stories.

Bell’s been compared to Carver and Munro. But his gift is unique, starting with
his hard-earned authenticity, and his mastery of the craft, especially of the classic short
story. Although, some stories are as subversive as those of the Beat writers: “Rational
Men at the End of the Reign of Reason (Graffiti on the Wall of Literature, #6)”.

73 year old Calgary-based Bell’s worked in the oil patch and for the CRTC. He’s
soft-spoken, shy and witty. He descends from a family that fought on both sides of the
American Civil War. Living in Ottawa, Bell met poets Dorn, Ginsberg, and Creeley. Not
surprisingly, Bell has a poet’s perfectly pitched ear for tone and nuance.

Bell’s first book was The North Saskatchewan River Book (Coach House, 1978).
It would be 25 years before his next collection, Destroyer of Compasses (Guernica,
2003), followed by No Place Fit For a Child (Guernica, 2009).

Others peer into the abyss, but Bell switches into four wheel drive, snaps on the
light bar and explores the coulee floors. While Bell illuminates dark places, he also brings

levity to well lighted ones, as fearlessly, humorously and wryly as Faulkner, or the
Spanish-speaking writers he admires: Cortazar, Hernandez, Jimenez, Lorca, Puig, and
Machado. Bell sets several stories in Spain and he switches locales masterfully
throughout Tracie’s Revenge and his other books.

What makes Bell a standout, is his ability to move a story from reality to dream or
nightmare, and back again, in a few sentences. He spoke of how the Spanish writers
“create explosions and write from inside grief.” Bell’s characters often create or escape
from small, sometimes large, sustained detonations.

For example, the title story depicts Tracie who blithely sets up her husband’s
death and then walks away. Bell writes:

“She thought of her husband at the sawmill and hoped an accident
there would take his life so she could inherit the insurance money
and the pick up truck.” (9)

And we are now compelled to follow Tracie and her young son right to the story’s
chilling final sentence.

Bell writes women vividly, often beautifully, from their fashions to their dark
fantasies, from young girls to mature women, without romanticizing or demonizing. I
asked him how he does this: “I’ve had three long-term relationships; I have two daughters
and four granddaughters whom I love – I’ve seen what they can do.”

Bell writes sagely about desire, and is funny and flirty too. “Soft, & Easy, Hello
or Goodbye” depicts two couples who meet separately in a bar, and how the dates don’t
work out. A man remaining from one couple has been casually sketching the woman
from the other couple and the two begin chatting. The woman looks at the man’s sketch:

‘“It’s me,” she said, “It’s good. You’re a real artist.”
“I am,” he said. “Starting tonight. Starting with you.“’
”Sure. I believe that, Mr. Artist.”’(43)

In a few deft sentences, the flirtation is on.

Bell’s a smooth operator; never crude, always classy. He is an artist and as fine a
writer as we’ve seen in a long time. And he’s currently working on a novel set in Spain.
Lucky for us.

​

Bruce Hunter bio:
Calgary-born, Bruce Hunter is a poet and fiction writer. His last appearance in Freefall
was in 1978. His Two O’clock Creek – Poems New and Selected (reviewed by Lisa
Pasold in Freefall Volume XXIII Number 1) won the 2011 Acorn-Plantos People’s
poetry award,. His novel, In the Bear’s House, about a young deaf boy who find love and
redemption on historic Kootenay Plains, won the 2009 Canadian Rockies Award at the
Banff Mountain Book Festival.