Description
Winner of the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction • A Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award Finalist • A 2022 ReLit Award Finalist • A Siskiyou Prize Semi-Finalist • A Miramichi Reader Best Fiction Title of 2021
Out there by the dock the ocean and the air are just layers of shadow and darkness. But the creature’s flesh hums through the dark—a seep of violet in the weeping night.
From refinery operators to long term care nurses, dishwashers to preppers to hockey enforcers, Chemical Valley’s compassionate and carefully wrought stories cultivate rich emotional worlds in and through the dankness of our bio-chemical animacy. Full-hearted, laced throughout with bruised optimism and sincere appreciation of the profound beauty of our wilted, wheezing world, Chemical Valley doesn’t shy away from urgent modern questions—the distribution of toxicity, environmental racism, the place of technoculture in this ecological spasm—but grounds these anxieties in the vivid and often humorous intricacies of its characters’ lives. Swamp-wrought and heartfelt, these stories run wild with vital energy, tilt and teeter into crazed and delirious loves.
Praise for Chemical Valley
“In this courageous collection, David Huebert holds little back as he weaves superbly crafted stories of the dark, difficult, and gritty reality of being human. Whether it be the destructive impact we have on our environment, each other, or ourselves, Huebert tackles this challenge with intelligence and compassion, both in his language and style, and in the empathy with which he portrays the human experience. The intertwining of ugliness, beauty, metallic cold and human warmth, and destruction and hope, creates a visceral, hopeful, and rewarding experience for the reader.”—Alistair MacLeod Prize Jury Statement
“Huebert’s uncanny facility for spinning densely poetic fiction out of the tawdry horror of twenty-first-century life has made him one of the most captivating authors of the past decade.”—Literary Review of Canada
“Huebert has a razor-sharp wit and an exacting eye for human foibles … A masterful assemblage of environmentally minded tales.”—Kirkus
“Huebert’s prose shines, frequently catching the reader off guard with startling but memorable turns of phrase and delirious imaginative leaps. And while the manic energy, eccentric humour and wry observations on life and love keep us entertained, the book’s rich emotional core draws us in, touching us at the most profound level.”—Miramichi Reader
“Huebert is a gifted short story writer. His characters do contain multitudes, each story a set of worlds. Collectively, they reflect our times, and help us contemplate the most dire of threats to our singular habitable planet.”—Atlantic Books Today
“Every story in Chemical Valley is uncanny, with a surprising dose of optimism nurtured by the bonds we share with each other as well as with the non-human world of which we are a part. What I have not discussed is the humour and heart throughout Huebert’s collection—it is an astounding feat to grapple with the reality we live in while also choosing to affirm the beauty around us. One can only hope that Huebert is working on a novel.”—University of Toronto Quarterly
“[A] masterful exploration of dirty nature writing … Chemical Valley’s stories, for all their dystopian demons, are balanced by Huebert’s insistence on penning his characters with an empathetic hand. His gaze may be harsh, like the reality we inhabit, but his love for his fellow man, and our desperate desire for connection, is unwavering.”—Hamilton Arts & Letters
“Huebert’s stories feel polished, elevated and expansive. Their intensity invites readers to reread, whether out of necessity or enduring curiosity … Huebert digs deep, things get messy, and there’s often a glitter of unanticipated discovery in the recesses of his stories—but only for the potential to illuminate another layer of darkness.”—Marcie McCauley, Event
“David Huebert’s short stories explore environmental dread and creeping climate chaos, but also the power of love and community in a damaged world.”—Laura Lynch, CBC What on Earth
“[D]ark, disturbing, excellent … As a result of [Huebert’s] poetic literary powers, I found myself mesmerized by the words and stories in this book, despite the grim contents. Or, even, because of them.”—Consumed By Ink
“Thought-provoking, smart, and frighteningly surreal, David Huebert’s Chemical Valley is a brilliantly crafted collection of short stories that confront the violence of human nature in the natural world.”—The Farside Review
“Huebert works to create a world that seems almost futuristic then slowly reveals that he speaks of now and how our choices are destroying our health and our planet. He makes us feel the emotional side of well-developed characters as they face the world in fear and wonder.”—bUneke Magazine
“The stories are varied, featuring oil refinery workers, teenage climate activists, long-term care nurses, and more, showing the issues and intricacies of their lives in lush detail. The grim explorations of wealth inequality, illness, and bereavement are counterbalanced by the rich and lyrical prose, providing heartfelt insights into today’s damaged world and the individuals who inhabit it.”—ZYZZYVA
“Chemical Valley is full of stories that are beautiful, gross, depressing and uplifting all at once. Through the use of dazzling language and complex characters, this deeply thoughtful collection will truly get you thinking.”—Dalhousie Gazette
“The characters in … Chemical Valley live in a world that has been molded and shaped by neoliberalism and the oil industry … It’s a situation that could easily elicit nihilism, doom, and mourning—a kind of eco-grief—and yet, the various stories in this collection strive and yearn towards a sublime toxicity that finds beauty amidst the debris, and accordingly, in the lives of its inhabitants.”—Peter Szuban, PRISM International
“Chemical Valley—both in terms of its storytelling and presentation—shines on just about every meaningful level.”
—Always A Critic
“By delving into the lives of a range of characters, feral hockey players, grieving shift-workers, and love-sick teenagers, Huebert asks an urgent question—how to survive in a world that values chemicals and capitalism over human life? Lively, affecting, tragic, careful, and shot-through with humor, the stories seeped under my skin. I won’t forget them any time soon.”—Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal
“These stories are a making and unmaking, a feeling into the world and then a kind of visceral wrenching so that all that is or was once living unwinds and flashes of story break free—binding the reader into the flesh of a burdened earth, still breathing. An ecstatic surrender of beloved flesh, and dream, and carbon beings through geological and human (altered) time. Huebert tinkers human time across industrial effigies that make and break and will one day also be broken—a dream not yet quite dreamt, but this work is part of the dreaming. This collection is, in Huebert’s own exquisite play of words, ‘beautiful and polluted, toxic and sublime.’”—Angélique Lalonde, author of Glorious Frazzled Beings
“Visceral, intelligent, and original, David Huebert’s Chemical Valley displays a deep empathy and understanding of human relationships and a profound concern for our world. I was struck by how Huebert can take the grittiest of subject matter and turn it beautiful with his lyrical, alchemical prose. The stories in this collection are saturated with imagery and full of exquisite, textured language: this is the kind of writing that deserves to be read closely.”—Shashi Bhat, author of The Most Precious Substance on Earth
