The Canadian Nights by Katharine Campbell

The president of the United States has a giant red button on his desk. If he ever chose to push this button, it would send the world into chaos. This button is for emergencies only and is designed to break the internet.

How do I know this button exists? Please, everyone knows it exists.

In The Canadian Nights, this infamous button is pressed while the Canadian prime minister is live streaming a hockey game. Without hockey to vent his pent-up aggression, the Canadian prime minister snaps. He stops saying "please" and "thank you". He pushes past people without saying "excuse me". He even litters. That's right he drops a gum wrapper on the sidewalk and doesn't pick it up.

Worst of all, he has all US citizens on Canadian soil arrested and declares he will throw one to a horde of angry beavers every day until the President restores the internet.

But one brave US citizen, Amala Patel, comes up with a plan to stop the carnage. She volunteers to be the next victim on the condition that the prime minister listen to her tell a story before her mauling. The bored, internet-starved prime minister agrees and becomes so enthralled by her fables that he continually postpones her mauling so he can hear more. The Canadian Nights is a compilation of Amala's sixteen best fables.

Katharine Campbell uses this idea as a framework to showcase some truly hilarious short stories. There's a modern twist in all of them but they all hearken back to the traditional fairy stories whose premises we know. Some stories had a pointed message, albeit one that you can easily ignore*, and some were just funny takes on familiar tropes. That makes them work on two levels. My favorites were Elves vs. Elves: A Christmas Miracle and The Smart Home Rebellion but all of them were good.

I first encountered Katharine Campbell's writing in her fractured fairy tale Love, Treachery, and Other Terrors which was also funny and which I also enjoyed a lot. It had a very different feel from this and I'm looking forward to seeing what genre she chooses to skewer next. 

 

* Although ignoring the pointed message about insider trading may cause cancer in the state of California.