THE BRUBURY TALES

In this homage to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a diverse group of security guards in present-day Los Angeles compete in a storytelling contest in order to win time off from work.

The tale begins during the night shift at a hotel with the supervisor trying to determine who among the security guards should get the week off between Christmas and New Year’s. To choose the winner of the prized vacation, the group holds a storytelling contest, and the book’s narrator acts as judge. Most of the guards take their turn, giving their versions of classics from O’Henry, Poe, Gilman, Saki, Crane and others. The Brubury Tales follows in the footsteps of Chaucer and Boccaccio in that it borrows stories from previous authors, but the familiarity of the stories here detracts from the larger narrative. What is more appealing than the tales is the interplay among the guards themselves;  unfortunately, this often takes a backseat to the stories. Because each guard tells an often impersonal story, there is little chance for the guards to deepen their personalities through the telling of their tales. What little is learned about the storytellers is gleaned through the narrator’s words or the few pages between yarns. Former security guard Mundo wrote the entire book in verse, and while the poetry is impressive, it doesn’t quite fit the setting—poetry doesn’t sound natural coming from a gaggle of security guards at a Holiday Inn in L.A. The Brubury Tales is an ambitious undertaking, one which is mostly successful as an exercise in literary imitation. However, if a reader wants to hear Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” he can do worse than reading the original.

Fans of classic literature may appreciate this and will no doubt enjoy picking out their favorite tales told in verse, but a replica will always pale in comparison to the original.