While laying in the grass of New York City’s Central Park with the skyscrapers warmly embracing me, I cracked open the short story collection, On Beauty.
Through 33 distinct vignettes, Ottawa author rob mclennan (whose name is lowercase as an artistic choice) tenderly captures the beauty in the quotidian moments, conversations and memories that shape us as human beings.
On Beauty grants readers a heightened appreciation for the simple moments in life. I caught myself paying attention to each person who walked by me in Central Park as they lived their everyday lives. I wondered what their stories could be, and which memories they hold close.
Through powerful prose and smooth rhythm, mclennan explores various interpretations of memory. In the story, “Fourteen things you don’t know about Arturus Booth,” memories take the form of a snow globe as certain events dislodge the snowflakes around him.
Each story organizes ideas as items within a numerical list. While the numeral transitions seem somewhat arbitrary at times, marking transitions between time periods, perspectives or prosodic rhythms, it’s easy to find solace in the structure’s predictability while moving from one number to the next.
“I have spent all my life trying to find connections between things,” mclennan admits in a chapter titled “Art I have not made.” Perhaps the numerical structure is his way of interconnecting moments and conversations as various brush strokes of life, all while stepping back to view the bigger picture.
The stories also reward Ottawa readers. As a local himself, mclennan captures the beauty in everyday Ottawa moments. A story titled “Bicycle” refers to neighbourhoods like Sandy Hill, Ottawa’s notorious heat waves and Canada Day crowds on Parliament Hill.
Certain stories invoke a striking narrative on the social constructions that underpin the mundane. The speaker recalls their journey choosing a name for their unborn child in a story titled “A dream about vegetable soup.” The vignette grapples with how celebrities like Marilyn Monroe changed their name to reach fame, while others simply grow into their names, “to fill like a container.”
This flows beautifully into the next chapter, “The names of things,” which pointedly questions the arbitrary labels we assign to items, and how these labels often fail to encapsulate the associated memories.
“I name you, silver pocketwatch: handed down from my great-grandfather, from his time in Montreal. Now set in the palm of my sister,” mclennan writes.
Themes of absence and loss act as a striking throughline bounding On Beauty’s stories together. A recurring cancer diagnosis is framed in the sense of time running out. Events are often situated in time relative to the death of the speaker’s parents.
After a critical reflection of memories and how we perceive them, mclennan ends by highlighting the beauties of the present-day mundane. Kettles boiling. Reading the newspaper. Toddlers kicking off their boots.
There’s beauty in the mundane for those who seek it, and that’s why On Beauty is best consumed in a public setting, surrounded by other people’s interpretations of everyday life. This thought-provoking short-story collection is sure to give you a greater appreciation for the everyday routines of those milling about around you.
Featured image by Natasha Baldin.
