The Martlet

“A car crash is little more than a vivid string of moments — of pain, fear, panic, and utter loss of control. It’s nothing like in the movies, where everything is slowed down and exaggerated,” writes Patrick Blennerhassett in Monument. Blennerhassett’s book is much the same: a fluid description of moments and events that lead to a bone-cracking conclusion.

The protagonist, Seth Wilhelm, is an alcoholic pill-popper with bloody knuckles and plenty of stitches. Like the book itself, Seth is out of order, crude and ultimately enduring and amiable at the core. He is defined by his surroundings, by the bars, by the factories and the hockey rink.

Seth is a man with the world against him, a promising hockey player who was robbed of his dreams by chance, and left angry at nothing as a result. From day one an abusive father beats Seth, and the world takes over from there — feeding failure after failure to his face. Seth is against the boards, and is constantly caught with his head down. If nothing forces him to face rock bottom, he’ll end up in a cool bed of blood on the ice.

Monument’s characters are hardly of high moral standard; they steal, they spit, they drink too much and do too little to make up for their shortcomings. Yet Blennerhassett forces his characters to endure. He shows the little bit of light in each twisted person, and their shadows are cast all the longer as a result. These people are not perfect. Rather, they are something far more familiar. They are human.

Blennerhassett’s writing style shows clear influence from his journalism background. He writes simplistically and with a clear sense of direction in each paragraph. Sometimes the world melts and is painted in the most beautiful strokes of meaning. The clack of hockey sticks harkens back to the crackle of a fire; a man is thrown through a window in a beautiful electric halo. And sometimes the world is not beautiful. Sometimes the world is sex without the sexy — a bunch of tangled limbs that sweat out Valium and cocaine.

The book is constructed in a manner similar to Seth’s psyche. It starts with a pummeling and it ends with a metaphorical punch to the stomach — a twist that hits the reader like a right hook and leaves him gasping for more.

Monument is clearly Blennerhasset’s first piece of long fiction. There are moments of crude exposition and scenes that seem to accomplish little other than to show the depravity of the characters. However, much like the lull in a thunderstorm, these moments of quiet interlude are soon overwhelmed by the roar of thunder and the blinding light of something powerful.

As unflinching as a broken fist on a hockey helmet, Monument is a tangle of broken intentions and complicated characters. It’s a crushing slap shot, a whip crack to the jaw that’s both elegant and crude.

There are imperfections, but like the subject matter itself, Monument roars into the net with a siren that’s screaming “goal.”

The launch party for Monument takes place at Lucky Bar on Oct. 16, starting at 8 p.m. Admission is free and Blennerhassett will be reading from the book.