In Jacob Wren’s latest novel, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, an unnamed fiction writer with nothing to lose moves from his pent-up room, stepping out of the world of the imaginary and into the front line. Driven by an unpalatable reality exercising upon his imagination that his own country is providing arms used indiscriminately to bomb civilians and a Dionysian urge to document it. He arrives like a documentary filmmaker without a camera, equipped only with an unwavering eye to break down the walls of the unassailable and reconcile the dark fringes that lurk omnipresent and whole on the frontier of a raging warzone.
He has one friend who resides there despite the constant threat looming overhead. She picks him up from the tarmac and thinks he’s gone mad; utilizing war to spur one’s creativity is a step too far. Knowing all the while that no work of fiction ever bled, and no land of milk and honey was ever preserved purely in the vicariousness of one man’s imagination, he decides to become intensely involved in first-hand living rather than writing. Armed only with a map, the narrator steps away from the refuge of his friend’s apartment, and into the turmoil of a conflict zone in a desperate quest to justify his presence amidst the chaos.
Prowling through morality and meaning in the rubble and ruins, he is taken and put into the trunk of a car with a bag over his head, a captive. After his capture, he finds himself with partisans who assimilate him into their cause.
Not being able to handle a Kalashnikov, he finds himself with a tape recorder, trying to understand the spirit of the resistance. He clicks play, and the partisans begin opening up about their true intentions: they are fighting to create a utopia of collective child rearing, women’s rights, and a dedication to environmental sustainability. Acting as the sole echoer of resistance, he journeys onward engaging in deep reflections on the ethics of war.
Jacob Wren’s latest scintillating work of literary fiction, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, is a book in revolt. Wren crafts a bold and unsettling narrative with the kind of clarity to explore ethical dilemmas that are both numerous and timely.
JACOB WREN’s published works include; Rich and Poor (finalist for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a Globe and Mail best book of 2016); Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed; Polyamorous Love Song (finalist for the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2014); and Authenticity is a Feeling. He is the co-director of the Montreal-based group PME-ART. Wren lives and writes in Montreal.
