SKIDS Quill and Quire review

"Skids" is the slang term for street kids or runaways living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Many of them are native Canadians, many are HIV positive, and many are addicted to heroin, crystal meth or alcohol. They are unwed teenage mothers or victims of sexual abuse at the hands of family members or surrogate family members. They turn tricks for drug money; they float in and out of detox and rehab clinics.

The dozen stories in Cathleen With's new collection focus squarely on the lives of these marginalized urban denizens, sketching their existence in language that is a raw and immediate, yet also infused with compassion and understanding. There is a marked lack of sentimentality to these stories. The characters do not retreat into maudlin self-pity, but instead cling desperately almost defiantly - to whatever rays of hope manage to shine into their dark lives.

With locates a certain nobility in the lives of her dispossessed and forgotten characters. The narrator of "Create a Real Available Beach," a drug-addicted skid who has done a stint in juvenile detention for breaking and entering, gets a chance to visit with the daughter she gave up to social services ("because keeping her wasn't manageable"). The HIV-positive male prostitute in "Angel's House of Ice" refused to perform certain sex acts with clients becasuse, as he says, "I am no kind of HIV murderer." And Charlie, the protagonist of "Sanny Tranny is Alive and Well and Living on Davie," finds redemption in helping his transvestite father, who is suffering from kidney failure.

The stories occassionally feel too brief and underdeveloped, more like sketched than fully realized pieces. A reader is sometimes left wishing that the author had chosen to include fewer stories, and to flesh them out in a more deliberate and detailed manner. But the stories largely succeed, thanks to the author's voice, which is original, fresh and authentic. With inhabits her characters from the inside out, and presents them to us with a clear, unblinking gaze. These stories feel lived rather than imagined.