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Books by Lachlan Mackintosh Skin by Bonnie Bowman Anvil Press, 144 pp. This All Happened by Michael Winter Anansi, 287 pp. From opposite sides of the country come two very different novels. In Vancouver, over the Labour Day weekend last year, Bonnie Bowman wrote Skin, which won her the International 3-Day Novel-Writing Contest. It’s an obsessive-compulsive crash course between a sexually tormented dermatologist and his psoriasis-ridden porn star patient. Bowman endows her middle-aged Dr. Nathan Swan with a "freakishly large member" and an eye for epidermal aberrations. While immensely readable, Skin is definitely not bound for Oprah fame. In Newfoundland, Michael Winter’s fictional memoir, This All Happened, charts one year in the life of writer Gabriel English, and is composed of 365 journal entries – one for each day of the year. Those familiar with Winter’s work will recognize English as the protagonist in his collection of stories, One Last Good Look. In that book, Gabe is actually writing this book, this memoir. And in this book, This All Happened, Gabe is working on another book, a historical novel set in Newfoundland. What actually happens in This All Happened isn’t unusual. There’s a lot of preparing meals and eating them, visiting friends who are artists or writers, making excursions out of St. John’s, and (especially enticing to Fast Forward readers) there is a lot of drinking at a pub called the Ship. Ultimately, though, it’s Gabriel and his relationship with Lydia Murphy that the reader is most interested in. Gabriel’s obsession for Lydia builds incrementally over the course of the memoir. On June 7th Gabe writes: "The story of my life with Lydia is the conflict of desire and being sated. Lydia is satisfied with me but dissatisfied with all other things. I’m the opposite." Into the picture comes a guy named Craig Regular. On July 7th Gabe writes: "Cold fact: Lydia’s utter joy of Craig makes me realize how little she enjoys of me. She laps up Craig – and isn’t this what we want? To fully enjoy the other person’s being." Later, on Halloween, Gabriel’s descent into winter has begun when he writes: "Lydia comes up to me, and offers the final question of the night: What is the function of regret. And I say, it allows you to understand that there are other possible lives to lead. No one, thankfully, asks me Leibniz’s question: Why is there not nothing?" While Winter’s This All Happened has the built-in reflective quality of a personal memoir or journal, Bowman’s Skin succeeds in its headlong evocation of strangers on a collision course. Both novels deal with a relationship that seeds an obsession. On the surface, This All Happened is the more believable of the two. The two major voices in Skin, however, are strong enough to ground Bowman’s book in a fetishistic reality all its own. Only when her novel expands to include characters other than Nathan and Cynthia does it begin to feel like something written in three days. This All Happened works whether read in one sitting or left beside the bed for weeks at a time. Because it is set up as a journal, every entry is a good starting place, and no amount of time diminishes Gabe’s recurring present tense. Finally, the memoir evokes an endlessly fascinating landscape. As Winter puts it in his acknowledgements, "May you all visit Newfoundland." Skin works as a hardcore novella hiding a warm, soft heart. The exuberant tone is reminiscent of last year’s The Pornographer’s Poem by another Vancouverite, Michael Turner. (Anvil Press also makes this debut novel available at a very reader-friendly $12.95.)

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