A Review of Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Fresse

Down to a Sunless Sea, a collection of short, short stories by Mathias B. Freese creeps up on the reader in layers. Each story in its unique way tells of either an intensely personal experience or tells about a more universal phenomenon whereby we are all in a state of suffering. Brendan Constantine, a current American spoken-word poet, talks about shock and how we experience initial shock in childhood and then how we spend most of the rest of our lives analyzing and attempting to heal the damage of that shock. In a larger sense in an era where "shock and awe" have been current buzz words, the human race cannot escape the traumas that have produced a "psychic numbing" whether it is because of the evidence of the holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, or the destruction of the two towers of 9/11. Mathias B. Fresse builds a poignant portrait of this state of mind through the stories of his characters.

Growing up in Brighton Beach, families are dysfunctional, but make the best of it. Characters are damaged, have low self-esteem, feel dislocated and fragmented, live out ancient wounds, are disconnected and sometimes narcissistic. Characters see the trash inside themselves and the trash out in the world around them. In "Chatham Bear" something indescribable but evil and violent lurks beneath the surface among all the trash of old refrigerators on the beds of pick-up trucks and discarded washers lying on backyard lawns. The bear is a distraction, a vehicle that just redirects the attention. People resemble clones of Anthony Perkins, have "a slight feral cast to their eyes"; the Remington is not far out of reach. Here, there is an undercurrent of fear in rural Canaan, New York. In "Herbie" Herbie wants to start a shoe shine business against his father's wishes and we see a tale more about the distances between father and son and the anger and violence passed on from one generation to another.

Wounds are passed on from generation to generation and characters seem not to be in control of this destiny. In "Billy's Mirrored Wall" we read, "I suppose that's one of the stories of the race - living out ancient wounds and soured existences not of our own making" In "Nicholas", a story about a teacher and a student, the somewhat illiterate narrator says, "You get that crap from people who don't like what there doin'." In "Mortise and Tenon", Edward "felt as if he was disconnected". His mother sees him in parts. He feels fragmented and disintegrated and as such picture frames appeal to him. "Consequently frames appealed to him ever so dearly for they gave meaning, if not sustenance to content." In Alabaster" characters who survived the holocaust are fragile, "like good china: a porcelain finish with hairline cracks". The mother and daughter in this story bear a "fatigue, as if vampirically ravished." They too only live as fragments, pieces of their former selves; childhoods lost to the holocaust, where now they are living not lives they wanted but some other strange fragile fearful life on the fringe.

In "Little Errands" the narrator says, "The lobby door opens, I remove my key and feel rewarded by the effortless and infinite grace by which locks and keys work - everywhere." There is a security in this like the picture frames holding in the meaning of the content in "Mortise and Tenon", but on the darker side locks and keys hold things in. The narrator is paranoid in a Kafkaesque sense, obsessed with the mailing of letters, desperately seeking and needing safety and security, indeed in shock and somewhat out of his own sense of necessity a bit narcissistic. A neighbour who asks him to make a mail drop for him gets this reply. "I declined, for the tension of caring for another while coping with my own needs is much too much."

In "Echo" we see this re-iterated theme that incorporates the shock and the psychic numbing which many of us feel in the era of potential nuclear holocaust and sudden terrorist attacks. The story speaks of reminiscences but there is a sad tragic sense of loss that goes further than the characters themselves. Jonathan says in response to David,

"It is all of us speaking; it is the gravity of relationship within us, the ebb and flow - the heartbreak, of time misused and unlived. It is life moving into death"

David later on says to Jonathan, "I just wanted to tell you that sometimes you just fade on me - like the Cheshire cat." David feels Jonathan hard to get to know although they have been friends a long time and Jonathan admits he finds it very hard to love. Jonathan feels something was done to him "as a child that has left (him) irreparably damaged" Also he says and he could be speaking for all the damaged people of the world.

"That feeling of terror, of being lost on a beach on a sea of strange blankets and bare bodies, that dumbstruck horror of feeling very much alone and torn off or away, as if one is dislocated, a fragment in a cruel time and place."

These stories are artfully written with lyrical metaphor and believable conversation. In short vignettes from an author who has the practical experience of a clinical social worker and psychotherapist, the writing compassionately reveals the suffering of individuals who struggle to make meaning and survive with broken fragmented lives in a landscape filled with trauma. Although not uplifting, this is an informative commentary on our times.

Mathias B. Freese is an award-winning essayist and author of The i Tetralogy, a fiction about the Holocaust which has garnered remarkable praise around the world (2007 Allbooks Editors Choice Award), the weight of his twenty-five years as a psychotherapist comes into play as he demonstrates a vivid understanding -- and compassion --toward the deviant and damaged.

David Fraser lives in Nanoose Bay, on Vancouver Island. He is the founder and editor of Ascent Aspirations Magazine, http:// www.ascentaspirations.ca, since 1997. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in over 50 journals including Three Candles, Regina Weese, Ardent, Quills and Ygdrasil. He has published a collection of his poetry, Going to the Well (2004), a collection of short fiction, The Dark Side of the Billboard (2006 ) and edited and published the four print issues of Ascent Aspirations Magazine Ascent A second collection of poetry, Running Down the Wind appeared in 2007 David is currently the Federation of BC Writers Regional Director for The Islands Region. His latest passion is developing Nanaimo's newest spoken word series, WordStorm

David Fraser has a BA in English from University of Toronto, and an MEd in adult education from OISE. In Ontario he taught English, Creative Writing Writer's Craft among other subjects at the secondary school level for 30 years. Currently he is a full time writer who also teaches skiing at Mt Washington in the winter.

Email: David Fraser

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