In two novellas and seven shorter stories, award-winning author David Carpenter addresses the theme of human frailties in his distinctively empathetic style.

A disabled widower seeks comfort in memory by getting in touch with his younger self. An old drunk, assisted by his own delusions, lays his ghosts to rest. A young child escapes her oppressive family by ministering to the needs of a monster in distress. A social reject acquires a new look and becomes consumed with the need for revenge against his early tormenters. A former social worker encourages a friendship with a paroled criminal. A cleaning woman in strained circumstances, determined to support herself and her child, feels compelled to make extreme choices.

Some of Carpenter’s characters face the frailties that come with old age, loneliness chief among them. Others become vulnerable to their own compulsions, and set in motion moral dilemmas. Many of these loners reach for their phones to send or receive a message that might deliver them from their isolation, but even though they hear “Hello” from the person they reach out to, there is no guarantee of deliverance.

These are tales told by a master of language, an author who uses words with skill, sureness, and grace. While his characters may not find what they’re looking for, readers of these compelling pieces of short fiction surely will.

The Worldshapers Interview

Posted on February 23, 2025
A chat with award-winning Saskatchewan author David Carpenter about his new collection of short fiction, Hello.

Critical Response

”David Carpenter shows true mastery of the short story and the novella forms. The narratives are graceful and strong, confidently written by someone who the reader can immediately tell has handled language for many years, and the effect is not unlike hearing a pianist who has been playing for decades, whose fingers touch the keys with a skill, sureness, and grace not available to a less-experienced performer.”

— J. Jill Robinson, author of The Land of Not Knowing.

"Hello is the first book of fiction I have read by Saskatchewan writer, David Carpenter, after having read two of his nonfiction books, Courting Saskatchewan and The Education of Augie Merasty. His versatility and credentials are well established, but in spite of that, I imagine his work still does not get the level of praise and attention it deserves. Hello is a collection of short fiction, seven short stories and two novellas, and based on what I know about Carpenter, it strikes me as a record of the obsessions, sympathies, locales, and people that have been part of his life. Like the virtuoso banjo player that one of his characters aspires to be, Carpenter knows which strings to pluck in order to evoke empathy, humour, and nostalgia.

Many characters in Hello are outcasts and loners, those navigating young adulthood, experiencing trauma or the loss of a loved one. In some cases, characters are searching for a metaphorical “hello,” an affirmation or a calling, as in “Frailing,” where a university student working at Lake Louise feels that the banjos in the “gloomy basement” of a music store have “the power of a magnetic field.” In some cases, the “hello” is literal, as in “The Ethel Suite,” where the phone call an elderly Jewish man makes to his former employee is the framing device for a long story about the hardships of the twentieth century and a headstrong woman’s struggle to make a living. “The Carl Quartet,” the most unique and experimental story, sees an old drunk phone his younger self to warn him not to play with an older boy, as “it could change [his] whole life.” Whether tongue-in-cheek or dead serious, Carpenter asks whether people can change, for better or worse. This is most obviously shown in “Reincarnation,” a standout story about a man burned in a car crash who receives a face transplant, then using his new look, enacts revenge on an old bully and an ex. Confronted with the hollowness of his revenge, he asks himself: “Have I been reincarnated as an asshole? Have I regressed morally? Scary questions.”

Carpenter’s love of fishing, animals, and the outdoors is well represented. Jasper is a common setting, as is Edmonton and Saskatoon. In “The Fuss,” a “tall blue spruce with great downward-sweeping branches and millions of blue needles” is the “hiding place” of a girl whose parents are having marital issues, before becoming the home of an injured cougar. The cougar does not necessarily represent anything more than distraction and companionship for the girl, but Carpenter is squarely on the side of the wild in his writing. He reverently depicts the pleasures of fly-fishing in stories like “Gordon’s Idea,” where the title character becomes involved in a renegade operation to restock lakes in the Rockies with trout, and “Gentle Rain,” a gentle story about a young man hoping to impress his hospitalized father by catching a large rainbow trout. At the beginning of “Gordon’s Idea,” widower Gordon Carter and Richard Simon, battling cancer, whose “friendship had begun in the early 1950s in Social Credit Alberta,” reunite. Gordon explains the idealism – contrasted with Richard’s conservatism – he tried to impart to former students, foreshadowing his later actions: “I challenged them to pick their battles and to start off small. Something with large implications, but a battle with limits, one that they could win.” Throughout the book, Carpenter writes with the humanism and moral clarity of John Steinbeck. Shades of Ernest Hemingway, Norman Maclean, and W.O. Mitchell are also present. If there are moments where the narratives start to meander, Carpenter is always quick to reel the reader back in.

Hello is a book written by a raconteur for fellow raconteurs. In the company of his fellow trout stockers, Gordon muses about how “he kept running into his students in the stores downtown and in airports all over Western Canada. How old stories kept getting re-told by old acquaintances at every reunion. How people and stories kept coinciding, and how the stories seemed to change with each teller.” I would not be surprised if this is a sentiment that David Carpenter has felt in his own life. The stories in Hello are his kind and thoughtful gift. A “hello” to people he will never meet, a way to spread the magic of storytelling."

— Brandon Fick