Book Review: Good Victory by Mikka Jacobsen

May is short story month, so I’m going to be reviewing a few here in the next few weeks, and I’m starting with a local Calgary author. Good Victory by Mikka Jacobsen is a collection of 11 stories, published by Freehand Books, whose office is located about a half hour walk from my house; you don’t get much more local than that! Even better news is that this collection is engaging, I found myself enjoying each story and wishing they were all longer, just so I could spend a bit more time with the characters.

Book Summary

Each story is fairly different, although they share a few common threads. Many of them are written from the female perspective, often looking back on a childhood memory, although some are reflections on adulthood as well. “A Trick of the Light” is an outlier, as it’s written from the perspective of a young male grad student who lies to his fellow students and professor, making up a fictitious life for attention. “Be All You Can’t Be” describes a chance encounter at West Edmonton Mall, a psychic fair and a spontaneous meet-up between old friends who have much to prove about their time apart. “Good Victory” is an odd addition to the collection, as it’s one of the shorter stories, and describes a short moment in time when a young girl is desperate to secure a specific Happy Meal toy, and her normally judgmental father does his best to secure it for her. “Better Instincts” is about a grouchy pet cat that seems to ruin her owner’s life, yet it remains the most treasured part of her small existence. “Absorbent” is a cringe-inducing look at an aunt who both embarrasses and fascinates her niece, made all the more poignant by the fact that this aunt was also the surrogate mother for the young girl. Not necessarily a ‘coming of age’ group of stories, instead this collection highlights the slightly darker edges of childhood, peeking beneath the shiny veneer of nostalgia to see what we like to avoid or forget about.

My Thoughts

I’ve mentioned in other reviews how much I enjoy reading books that situate themselves in an area I’m intimately familiar with, and this book absolutely nails that feeling for me. In fact, one of the stories takes place in a park about three blocks from my house, so I got a little thrill when I read that particular story. Although most of the stories don’t explicitly state they take place in Calgary, I recognized quite a few landmarks, including the golf ball-shaped house in the inner city, which I love pointing out to my kids when we drive past it. Even when the stories could occur in any place, the fact that they were situated in my very own part of the city made them feel even more relevant to me, as if I alone was the intended audience.

Each story contains little nuggets of keen observation, typically about growing up, but often life in general too. One of my favourite stories “The Spider Olympics” paired an eerie ghost story with painfully stark reflections on developing a sense of self, and how tenuous this can be for people:

“But my clients want straightforward advice. They want the message to be handed over to them easily, with numbered lists and exercises that point back to the self. They want clarity and certainty where fiction often shrouds life with opacity and moral ambiguity” (p. 247 of Good by Victory by Mikka Jacobsen).

I also loved “The Vacation” which slowly builds up this wonderful atmosphere of dread as it suggests the protagonist’s father committed an awful parenting error when she was young, involving an ill-fated trip to Disneyland. The ending isn’t dramatic nor does it settle anything, which so often reflects our feelings about these ‘big’ moments in childhood. The situations these characters find themselves in are noteworthy, but fairly common as Jacobsen nails the complicated emotions circling adulthood.