Book Review: Mistakes, Misstatements, Lies and Other Miscommunication Tactics

Reviewed by Nikolas Mavreas

An intriguing book of short stories on themes of crime and language

Norm Cairns takes inspiration from his long career as an attorney and a prosecutor in New Mexico with this entertaining, elaborately titled collection of short stories.

Mistakes, Misstatements, Lies and Other Miscommunication Tactics is made up of stories that are interconnected not only thematically but also, to an extent, narratively. The narrative is partly a piece of autobiographical fiction as we witness interesting slices of our protagonist’s life and legal career.

A theme running through these stories is the use of language itself. The author devotes his introduction to it, as he makes the case for America’s worldwide linguistic imperialism. Even though the cultural imperialism of the United States is undeniable, the dominance of the English language might be better attributed to the British empire rather than the American. 

Beginning with a discourse at a café about the meaning of that eternal “why,” we continue with a dialogue between our protagonist and an extraordinarily prolific identity thief who is peculiarly obsessed with saying the word, if that’s an accurate descriptor for it, “baddabing.”

Reading on, we find ourselves in the midst of a delightful encounter in a New Mexico zoo, in what is a truly heartwarming piece of writing. This is an exception, as most of these stories have a characteristically cold style to them, at times bordering on the absurdist. 

The main body of the book, before the pay off, closes with a scene at a New Mexico nuclear weapon testing site and a short piece about a guy who just won’t stop talking. Cairns wraps up with a science fiction story set in the closing days of the Second World War, in which Allied soldiers capture a German castle only to make a very surprising discovery, and finally a mystery story around the book’s previous themes.

There are times when the writing is wise and affectionate, as, for instance, in a comment about what “the authorities,” to which the author used to belong, really are. He believes the term simply refers to anyone who is accorded the right to hurt someone else. 

Some stories are followed by relevant poems written by the author himself, which are quite attractive. The book is generously provided with images on nearly every page, the great majority of them generated by A.I. The narration tends to be conscious of itself, not abstaining from self-reference, but dialogue insists as its main force. 

In Mistakes, Misstatements, Lies and Other Miscommunication Tactics, Norm Cairns spins a web of compelling scenes, dripped in humor and self-reflection, to deliver a fascinating book.

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