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 the language alone does not offend. Here, however, the use of crude language is almost celebrated.

Right on the opening page of the first story, Cleaning Up, we get, "And he hated us. Hated. Under his dark blue jacket and polished brass buttons, old Al fucking hated us." A few lines further down, another 'f...ing' appears in a slightly different context. It is as if the f-word can stand in for a whole range of very good English words to express a wide range of ideas and emotions. What a limited imagination!

This is written by a member of the generation that also uses 'like' to act as substitute for a whole range of perfectly good words. We always say that writers should write about what they know, and hence they should use the language of their time. If Sellyn does know about the experiences of some of his characters, then as a writer, he should have been able to be more creative about when and where he uses such language. It seems, therefore, that here we have a young writer with a very fertile mind, but as yet a very immature one. This short story selection reeks of immaturity, Joyce Carol Oates's teaching notwithstanding, nor the Princeton 2004 Francis LeMoyne Page Prize for Distinctive Achievement award.

Oates is quoted on the back page, "An impressive debut. These are powerful stories, suspenseful and unpredictable, aimed at the jugular." She is right as far as going for the jugular, but suspenseful is really not applicable to these tales. Every good thriller or suspense story in the end does have a purpose, the bad guys — even if they get away to allow the writer to serialize the story (think 007 Bond and his nemesis)— are made to pay some price. Not in these stories. So, they may appeal to the testosterone-driven young males of an uncertain age (who usually aren't readers), but not to a wider readership.