FEAR, WEAR AND TEAR is the first short story collection by Shawe Ruckus, the author of the acclaimed “Mercenaries in Suits” crime series and the “Princess Rouran Adventures” books. Like his novels, Ruckus’s stories demonstrate a deft touch and a whimsical sensibility that pitches his characters into a recognizable, yet slightly off kilter contemporary world. These eleven tales retain the melancholia that infuses parts of the “Mercenaries in Suits” series, but here, unmoored by the necessity of a propulsive mystery plot, his characters can indulge more freely in existential anxiety and nostalgic ennui.
Some stories are interlinked, a minor character in one becomes the protagonist of the next. In “Silent Disco”, in passing, the central character notices a man climb the watchtower at the beach where he is seated. In the subsequent story, “A Purple Cat Got My Tongue”, a man on a watchtower becomes the narrator of a reminiscence about the death of his grandparent.

For the most part, despite the daisy chain of connections, the stories stand alone. Ruckus seems less concerned with maintaining a consistent linked narrative, rather his characters share a similar world view. The recurring characters may interact but they seem to remain oblivious to their place in any grand web of stories. Objects change their meaning depending on the perspective of the narrator. For example, a rose, so integral to the plot and the subtext of the story “Three and a Half White Roses” shifts from being a conduit for love and romance to representing the cadaver of a relationship when it is kept in a fridge and dissected with tweezers in the later story, “A Good Cry”. The same rose but the call backs and connections are made by the reader not the characters. There is humor based on miscommunication, subtle inferences misconstrued, offense taken where none was intended. A character wants a bike repaired and hears “jungle service” instead of “general service” and takes it as a slur. Or broader comedy where somebody is expecting to go to an event celebrating Samuel Jackson which turns out to be in honor of Samuel Johnson.

The turns of phrase at which Ruckus excels in his novels are present too. A character’s thought at the way a former friend had changed is compared to him being, “like an apple with a worm at its core that never showed.” And at the close of another story the protagonist leaves the pub where “the night had stretched like a leaked ink cartridge”.

An astute observer of the human condition who shows an increasing maturity in FEAR, WEAR AND TEAR, author Shawe Ruckus triumphs in highlighting the ordinary oddness of the everyday in these short, melancholic and sometimes disconcerting stories.

~Kent Lane for IndieReader