A ‘unique slice of Canadiana’
Hello, Horse: Stories
by Richard Kelly Kemick
Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024
$22.95 / 9781771966078
Reviewed by Jessica Poon
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I am constitutionally allergic to readings—there’s never enough alcohol; the author’s self-deprecating jokes are perfunctorily phoned in; it becomes immediately evident why authors are seldom the voice for their own audiobook; and, of course, there is parasitism in the air and it smells like rotten shrimp cocktail.
I read and I write, so it would be otherwise sensible to assume that I enjoy hobnobbing with fellow literate scribes. But though no one has ever described me as introverted, I find the enterprise dubious at best and generally tedious. My posture is too wretched and my integrity too mighty for the necessary skill of networking—or so I tell myself. The antonym for LinkedIn, I’m pretty sure, is my name. Despite all this, I once attended a reading—no idea, truly, what I was doing there—where Vancouver-based Richard Kelly Kemick was promoting his book of poetry, Caribou Run.
It’s been years since that reading, but I have remembered him since, in large part because he has a three-piece name and people with three piece names are Very Big Deals (e.g. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt). And also because I remember enjoying his portion of that reading. All this to say, I’m not remotely surprised that Kemick is one of those people who’s talented in both prose and poetry; his short story collection, Hello, Horse is irrefutable proof.
In “Perfection,” the first story, when the protagonist’s co-worker expresses the desire to see an explosion, the mild-mannered yet observant protagonist suggests, “We could put a pear in the microwave.” I laughed out loud. The protagonist’s co-worker is on a veritable crusade, trying to prevent a consecutively victorious greyhound with the choice name of God Speed from nabbing yet another win. It’s a deliciously unhinged premise and executed with relish.
The story begins with a conversational immediacy, a nonchalant intimacy that skillfully tells you so much about three characters in two paragraphs:
I forgot to tell you this, but it’s incredibly important. Her grandfather was Joseph Malta, one of the two hangmen for the Nuremberg executions. She would take me to his house for dinner when we were working doubles, and we’d watch him bumble around the kitchen, serving cucumber sandwiches with Earl Grey. I never asked him about his past, but it seemed to dangle in the air, straining with its own weight.
After the hangings, he moved to Tallahassee where he returned to work as a floor sander and lived in a bungalow with no hot water. He didn’t care about my parents or my career prospects or my intentions with his granddaughter, who—even from across the table—could be heard grinding her teeth. He cared only about the dogs.
I was more ambivalent about this passage: “She had all the trappings of beauty but was actually quite ugly. Yes, she was thin, had distinguished features, with skin so soft and pale you’d paint your bathroom that shade. But she was also anemic, had a brutal bone structure, and skin so white it was as if light no longer touched her, like one of those creatures who lives at the bottom of the ocean and whose heart beats once every hour.”
Can someone get her an iron supplement, pronto? Although I found the contradiction of ugliness within ostensible beauty interesting—certainly, such a thing is paradoxically possible—I wasn’t necessarily convinced by the apparent ugliness because she’s … gothically pale. I mean, if you’ll paint your bathroom the shade of this girl’s epidermis—admittedly damningly faint praise—she can’t be that heinous. The description seems simultaneously a peculiar glorification and a takedown of Thin White Girl beauty, or, perhaps, more likely, a juvenile understanding of aesthete, as befitting the limitations of a typical teenage boy.
In Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, the protagonist brings up owl facts tirelessly. In Claire Lombardo’s Happy for You, the protagonist is fixated on dying whales. While it’s fun to assume the reader will ascertain zoological-themed allegories, the invocation of Quirky Animal Facts to reveal the underbelly of human nature, can eventually grate. Thankfully, in “Hello, Horse,” Kemick avoids heavy-handed animal parallels—there is, so to speak, just the right amount of horse. Millicent is friends with Jeremy and is dating Paul. Jeremy’s father’s arm got sawed off in a work accident, but died after being transfused with the incorrect blood type. Jeremy’s mother has exhausted all the arm money—$63,570, is what an arm’s worth, and “$337, 500 for the rest of him”—but continues to wear fox furs and pearls. Appearances matter, and sometimes that means violence. The last line—“ … I can see how tiring it must be to hold on to what’s wild and let go of what’s not” is effectively understated.

“What Descends When the Lake Thaws” is about two brothers whose desire for fame leads them not to Hollywood, but a subarctic lake. Kemick evinces a favouring of humorous contrast—“Yellowknife has two streets. They do not meet”; “Nothing to buy but ways to leave, and in the tavern we are overstaying our welcome”; “We buy a dogsled without a dog”; “The planet’s everything there is. The globe is everything there is with lines drawn over. And within those lines there are entire civilizations who do not know the feeling of waking up to see that it has snowed.”
“Patron Saints” features a Bengal tiger and a talking shepherd in Paris. There’s also a human couple, but the talking shepherd stole this story and I’m not mad about it. An example of the dialogue between the protagonist and the shepherd: “I say, ‘Do you ever think about each person in the world whom we haven’t yet met but are nonetheless destined to love?’”
The shepherd stops licking, says, “I told you that.” Call me a sentimental sap, but I love it.
In “Gravity,” Danny is a soon-to-be father with his girlfriend, Janny. (Quick, think of a couple name: DJanny?). His longtime best friend, Patrick is the kind of guy who treats a would-be humiliating experience—getting caught masturbating during March of the Penguins—into a party anecdote. He reminds me a bit of the talking shepherd in “Patron Saints” when he asks questions like, “Have you ever thought that if your mom and you were the same age, and she wasn’t your mom, would you be friends?” Danny notes that Patrick’s house “always smells like cat piss even though he doesn’t own a cat, and Emily’s always there and we’ve never really got along because she’s always wanting me to touch her.” Emily, by the way, is a dog.
A teenager enters a writing competition to pay the rent after her mother dies in “The Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition,” What does she decide to write about? A dog breeder named Michelle.
Overall, Kemick has balanced visually rich absurdity—there are nuns who play hockey in “Satellite,” for instance—to the backdrop of Canadian politics—tragically undersung in terms of reality TV-esque value—and the general malaise of youth with admirable, poetic flair. This is an unapologetically unique slice of Canadiana.
[Editor’s note: Richard Kelly Kemick will launch Hello, Horse at Tightrope Theatre (2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC) 7:30pm on September 8; on the same night, Caroline Adderson will launch A Way to Be Happy.]
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Originally from East Vancouver, Jessica Poon is a writer, former line cook, and pianist of dubious merit who recently returned to BC after completing a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon has reviewed books by Elisabeth Eaves, Rajinderpal S. Pal, Keziah Weir, Amber Cowie, Robyn Harding, Roz Nay, Anne Fleming, Miriam Lacroix, Taslim Burkowicz, Sam Wiebe, Amy Mattes, Louis Druehl, Sheung-King, Loghan Paylor, Lisa Moore (ed.), Sandra Kelly, Robyn Harding, Ian and Will Ferguson, Christine Lai, Logan Macnair, Jen Sookfong Lee, J.M. Miro (Steven Price), Bri Beaudoin, Tetsuro Shigematsu, Katie Welch, Megan Gail Coles, and Ayesha Chaudhry for BCR]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster
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