There are many reasons why stories told from the perspective of teens and early twentysomethings can falter in the eyes of older readers. When you’re young, life is full of superlatives, everything seems exciting and new, and this can lead to writing that suffers from a lack of subtlety and the illusion of a unique experience.

Such is the case with King, the first novel by UBC fine arts grad Tanya Chapman. The story is told from the perspective of Hazel, a bright young woman who tries to escape her unstable and affluent family – as well as her own insecurity and status as town slut – by leaving her parents’ house and taking up residence in a neighbouring community’s trailer park. Predictably, she shacks up with King, a charismatic mechanic-musician who attempts to drink away demons of his own. Neither is able to evade what plagues them, though, and the book ultimately becomes the story of a couple’s dissolution and a meditation on escape.

King’s storyline, though shopworn, could conceivably have been saved by rich characterization, quirky detours on the story’s narrative road, or other nuances. Unfortunately, most of the book’s details either fall flat or suffer from heavy-handed narration. Sometimes they do both. In an act of painfully obvious symbolism, Hazel tries to glam up her trailer-park life by planting wildflowers on her front lawn. (“But you don’t have to worry that you’re going to crush them, because they’ll just keep on living no matter how often you go to the front door.”) Much of the rest of the story is similarly overdone. And don’t look for memorable characters to liven things up, either. Ranging from Old Joe, the wise bartender, to Hazel’s alcoholic, non-communicative mother, to Egg, Hazel’s geeky, shy, college-educated friend in town for the summer, King’s characters are all drawn from stereotypes.

Also featuring a mechanic in a small town (Drumheller, Alberta, in this case) is Bow Grip, the first novel (after three collections of short fiction) from acclaimed Vancouver-based storyteller Ivan E. Coyote. It’s an engaging but flawed read. Joey, the book’s main character, is a sensitive, generous, hardworking, middle-aged man who has fallen on some rough times. Following the recent death of his father, he is thwarted in his own attempts to become a dad when lab results come back showing a low sperm count. Meanwhile, his wife, Allyson, has skipped town with the wife of one of Joey’s hockey buddies.

Felled by this perfect storm of emasculation, Joey is in real need of invigoration when James, the town outsider, comes into the shop and successfully attempts a dubious trade – a beautiful, handmade cello for a used car. The trade sets off a chain of events that finds Joey seeking himself and his destiny in the city of Calgary.

Joey’s amiable nature and the story’s warmth and relatively quick pace make Bow Grip a fun, fast read, but many things stand in the way of its being anything more. First, like King, though to a lesser extent, Bow Grip has a somewhat familiar storyline featuring characters we’ve all seen before: the quiet, good-natured mechanic; his unfulfilled, socially conscious, yoga-practising wife; his sullen, divorced, macho buddies. Second, conflict is rendered in a less-than-plausible way. This is due mostly to the book’s first-person perspective – we see everything through the eyes of the almost idealized Joey. His level of sensitivity and attention to detail reads less like a challenge to our traditional conceptions of “guys’ guys” and more like a narrative weakness.