Who, first of all is Sellyn? Well, he is not 'Nathan the Wise', that is for sure. He is a young Canadian writer in his early 20s, who now makes his home in Vancouver. He studied creative writing at Princeton University, where one of his mentors was Joyce Carol Oates. He appears to have grown up in Montreal, and Thailand, and was born in Toronto. There is no detailed biography attached to the book, so he is a fairly vague shadow on our literary horizon

In Indigenous Beasts, Sellyn has created a collection of short stories that do not contain many characters of redeeming nature. They indulge in mindless violence, take drugs as if it were candy, are vicious, thoughtless, and whatever else one can say about them that is negative. Many also do not seem to like females very much. Since, from the little research I was able to do on Sellyn, he is a fan of Easton Ellis, whose American Psycho was perhaps one of the darkest, most misogynist novels that has come to us out of the 1990s, one should not be surprised.

There is also a lot of rough language in this novel. Considering the characters that Sellyn has created, that language appears normal. Let's remember that most of us at one time or another used the four-letter 's' or 'f' word when truly upset. So, in itself . . .

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