Inspirational ‘what if’ moments

Runs in the Blood
by Matthew J. Trafford

Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025
$21.95 / 9781834050140

Reviewed by Michael Bigam

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Runs in the Blood, a sophomore collection of short stories by Matthew J. Trafford (The Divinity Gene), examines intimacy, responsibility, and the persistence of harm within personal and social relationships that often involve queer men and women (not to mention a narcissistic centaur and a polyamorous raccoon) as they navigate society’s ethical and emotional pressures. 

Most of the collection focuses on the experiences of queer men, with other queer perspectives delved into on occasion. Characters are rarely confronted with clear moral choices or decisive turning points. Instead, they navigate situations shaped by loyalty, emotional obligation, and social expectation. Harm emerges not as spectacle but as something incremental: knowledge carried quietly, a boundary adjusted, a decision deferred. Violence and wrongdoing, when they surface, are not framed as shocking ruptures so much as pressures that gradually reshape what characters are willing to tolerate. Responsibility becomes diffused, shared, or potentially postponed, often justified through care, patience, or the desire to preserve intimate relationships. 

Much of the collection’s force derives from Trafford’s sustained use of first-person narration. The narrators are articulate and reflective as well as capable of explaining their circumstances in careful detail, even as those explanations reveal limits in ethical clarity. This narrative proximity restricts interpretive distance, bringing readers into the narrator’s reasoning while leaving its adequacy in question. 

Rather than relying on unreliable narration in a conventional sense, Trafford, a MFA graduate of UBC’s Creative Writing program, allows narrators to speak fluently and persuasively, exposing how self-justification often functions as a moral act. Readers are not asked to distrust what is being said; instead, they look at how it is being framed at that moment. 

Trafford’s prose is controlled and measured, favouring accumulation over escalation. Tension develops gradually as scenes linger on reflection and aftermath rather than dramatic incidents. This restraint frequently heightens the stories’ impact, encouraging attention to emotional residue rather than event. At the same time, across the collection the consistency of voice creates a sense of ethical continuity even as the stories move between different settings and circumstances. There is a sense of inertia and individual narratives feel less like isolated explorations of individuals and instead transcend into variations on a shared concern. 

Rather than a single foregrounding plot, many of the stories instead emphasize moments of rupture and what follows. The focus rests on the rationalizations characters assemble, the silences they maintain, and the unease that remains unresolved. Stories such as “Sixteen Seconds” and “This Is How We Remember Kyra” engage directly with public spectacle and moral performance, examining how mediated forms of violence or grief complicate ethical response. Outrage circulates widely while responsibility remains uncertain. 

Other stories trace similar tensions within private relationships where the costs of confrontation are deeply personal. Throughout the collection, many domestic tensions unfold, within same-sex familial and relational contexts, where humour and anger are forged through fluid relationship structures. Irony and absurdity deepen rather than relieve the collection’s ethical pressures; and in “A Complete Index of How Our Family Was Formed” Trafford uses sharp humour as an abrasive vehicle for resentment and fatigue, instead of release. 

Taken together, the stories function less as discrete, individual stories than as sustained engagements with a common ethical terrain. The collection’s coherence lies not in shared characters or settings, but in its repeated attention to how harm persists through intimacy and explanation. 

Trafford is particularly attentive to the ways in which moral clarity erodes not through ignorance, but instead through familiarity—through the gradual normalization of what initially feels intolerable. The collection’s consistency of tone and perspective may prove demanding for some readers. There is limited formal variation, and moments of relief or contrast are rare. This sustained pressure can produce a sense of compression, especially across the later stories. 

Yet, this appears to be a deliberate choice rather than a limitation of range. Runs in the Blood resists the impulse to provide catharsis or clear moral resolution, maintaining continuity rather than offering closure. What could otherwise feel repetitive becomes, over time, an insistence on endurance. 

Overall, Runs in the Blood is a unique and unsettling collection of stories. An unease arises, though less from dramatic incidents than from sustained ethical pressures. Trafford does not offer solutions or redemptive arcs; instead, his stories ask readers to remain attentive to discomfort and ambiguity. Moral tension is neither resolved nor discharged, but carried forward, accumulating across the collection. 

The book’s strength lies in its refusal to simplify moral experience, presenting a sustained introspection on what persists—emotionally and ethically—and once harm has been recognized it is not easily resolved.

Michael Bigam is a 3rd-year student at Thompson Rivers University. [Editor’s notes: (1) the review of Runs in the Blood is Michael’s first contribution to BCR. We’re happy to publish his words; (2) the title of the review is adapted from the author’s interview with Trevor Corkum, published by 49th Shelf.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line 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, 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.

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