In the author biography for his first book of short fiction, Barry Webster is introduced as a classically trained pianist; appropriately, music is central to many of these stories. It’s present in the plot of some, but more importantly, when Webster’s at his best, music emerges in a pitch-perfect mix of language and imagery.

“The Royal Conservatory” – a playfully violent tale set in a music school and structured in the form of an opera – is an experimental prose performance told with varying sentence structure and point of view, crescendoing at its conclusion into full-on poetry. Told in a magical realist vein, the story revolves around instruments that become dangerous weapons and a pianist who bathes herself in margarine for inspiration. The result is an energetic voice and some ridiculously funny phrases, including this one from an instructor: “I think with pleasure of the joy, the wonder, the cracked jaws and kicked scrotums inherent in every bar of every piece I’ve ever taught….”

There are a few other gems in this collection of 12 stories that employ a more understated tone, which works perfectly as a contrast to their eerie otherworldliness. In one, a swimmer who nearly drowns remembers the traumatic event in a droll, detached voice, forcing the reader to imagine the terror.

It’s the more mundane stories that struggle to come alive, although Webster attempts to raise the blood pressure with fortissimo prose. In fact, these stories, which revolve around characters in life crises and troubled love affairs, rely too much on vague melodrama, losing the precision of language present throughout the rest of the collection. In “Capturing Varanasi,” a young woman in India experiencing what can only be called Western bourgeois angst declares, “In Canada I pulled my life up by the roots and set it on fire. I had no choice.” In another, a lovelorn character emotes, “The first time we made love back there in the bushes by the beach, something in the very centre of me exploded….”

The Sound of All Flesh is a lopsided collection indeed, but Webster’s debut should be applauded for its willingness to take risks, and to have some fun along the way.