READ | We’re In Trouble book review | Christopher Coake, Raincoast Books.

Jacket: We’re In Trouble, 2005.

To die would be an awfully big adventure.

Peter Pan knew it and Christopher Coake does too. His book We’re in Trouble is all about death, but before you write it off without a glance, hear this: it isn’t a downer.

On the contrary, Coake’s debut collection is thriller-done-right. Each of the seven stories contained within is about characters caught in what might be called “extreme circumstances”. Which is to say, situations that force them to confront personal truths. Each story is fresh and engaging, yet relatable, particularly since the book’s premise isn’t in itself fresh. Which is to say, all this is pretty familiar isn’t it? People do come to striking realizations about their lives when faced with danger. It’s a trope you can witness play out on any contemporary soap opera.

Still, We’re In Trouble is no daytime drama.

Coake’s stories only seem sensational on the surface.

In fact, they’re both smart and serious. A couple is trapped at an isolated cabin during a blizzard in “Abandon”. In another, entitled “Cross Country,” a father takes his maybe-son (spoiler: the paternity question isn’t settled) on a road trip. Yet another story contains a car crash that kills the parents of a toddler. In the title piece, actually a series of three vignettes, a man remembers a tragic accident, a couple witnesses a death, and a married pair deals with the right-to-die question (that is, terminal cancer and euthanasia).

It’s pretty heavy stuff.

But hey, Nick Hornby likes it.

Since the book’s release, it feels like publishers and reviewers have focussed less on the stories themselves and more on the fact that Nick Hornby praised them in one of his literary pieces for the UK magazine The Believer. (Hornby’s piece was later also published in his book of collected pieces from The Believer entitled The Polysyllabic Spree.)

In addition to calling the tales “beautifully written,” Hornby says “they’re never dull, and they all contain striking and dramatic narrative ideas.” He thinks that Coake, “wants you to look at his people, not listen to his voice.”

Most striking is Hornby’s assertion that, “sometimes, when you’re reading the stories, you forget to breathe.”

Whether that will be true for everyone is questionable, but even the possibility is worth a bit of excitement. It’s a rare book that can inspire such a feeling.

A version of this We’re In Trouble book review published in my regular “Words” column for Dose, June 13, 2005, shown below. 

Published in Dose, June 6, 2005.

More books and authors pieces are here. More reviews in general (of lots of  different stuff!) are here.