? Tubers by Mark Jowett Read Leaf Books, 166 pages, $26.95
They bounce and jostle through daylight and into the blackness of the underground. Nine stories explore the common journey linked by subway travel in three different cities.
Starting with the Metro in Paris, then London's Underground and finally into the New York subway, author Mark Jowett explores passing connections. Each city has its own flavour on which Jowett draws upon to layer the textures of his observations on.
In the Metro a couple embrace an anonymous observer to their encounters. A music rep discovers a boy with voice like an angel singing to himself below the streets of London, while an aging blues singer struggles against the sampling of her voice overhead on a passenger's ipod in New York. Music is a common thread for Jowett's short stories and its no surprise as he is a founding partner in the Nettwerk Music Group and also plays in Cinderpop, a Vancouver indie band.
Jowett's stories roll along with the cadence of the subway keeping time. They head toward a destination but not always a familiar one and like the subway journey the story sometimes ends abruptly and pushes us out the door to find our own conclusion.
