Tim Conley. Whatever Happens. Toronto:  Insomniac Press, 2006. 200 pp. Paperback. ISBN 1897178131.

Tim Conley’s debut book, Whatever Happens, is a diverse, fun, and complex collection of very short stories.  Both sarcastic and optimistic, this is an intelligent and worthwhile read.

Often, the images in the book have a surreal or dream-like quality — a prime example is “Means to an End,” the first piece in the collection. In this story, the main character, Maurice, hears a knock at his door, and upon opening it finds a woman asking to borrow some rope. After some negotiating, the visitor is left to her own devices with the length of cable. She’s tied it in knots and Maurice sees “at the farthest point of his vision, the importunate young woman steadily climbing into the clouds” (Conley 15). While reminiscent of surrealist writers like Andre Breton and the experiments of the Vienna Group, Conley is definitely expanding upon their ideas and stylistic devices.

It’s clear from the start that Conley has a voice all his own — his style explores the tension between the indifferent and the ecstatic, as well as the futility of academic pomp and circumstance when confronted head-on with life. For example, in the first story, “Means to an End,” Maurice viewing the woman climbing his rope into the sky asserts that “this rope committed an astounding faux-pas of physics” (Conley 15). When faced with the unknown and unexplainable, Maurice finds comfort in this academic perspective, in the end dismissing the girl and her rope: “'Absurd!' said Maurice, relieved” (Conley 15). This theme runs throughout the book, and showcases Conley’s great sense of humor and stylistic grace (e.g. another story, “An Annotated Affair,” tells a love story using footnotes).

One of my favorite stories in the volume is entitled “Constellation.” In the beginning of this piece, a meteorite crashes into an astrology conference. While still parodying the more bookish approaches to art and life, the structure of Conley’s story begins to mirror his subject matter of a constellation, tying together several characters’ lives. A young man promising to win Italy the World Cup, a portrait painter of the nineteenth century, a cat who dreams of a tattooed sailor, the rich count who loses his money when the sailor’s ship sinks, an emerging rock band in San Francisco, a Welsh professor of linguistics, and a doctor are linked through the free-associative structure of the story, which ends up as an unlikely constellation of people. The story has elements of both satire and the more optimistic notion of a collective consciousness or a connection between all people.

Overall, I found all of these themes and literary influences were woven into a beautifully told, at times startling, but altogether brilliant book. Whatever Happens deserves all the stars I’ve got.

— Kristina Marie Darling