"Weaving poetry with history with fiction, Aaron Schneider combines the best of what both genres have to offer. The Supply Chain jumps from monuments to the dead in France to Matt Nowak's swimming lessons as a boy, showing how a man living in London, Ontario, is never too far from the complex world of military arms production. As Matt grapples with his feelings of disconnect from his newborn son, he also realises 'the way no one talks about working at UM, not even with their partners, not even in their still houses with no cars going by.' Through the parallel narrative of this father-son relationship, Schneider comments on what it means to be an onlooker, and how the only way to break through complicity is to push through emotional barriers and emerge as a participant."
- Manahil Bandukwala, author of MONUMENT
"The most vital imperative for any novel that plays with form is trust: the reader must trust the writer, since the familiar form is rejected as inadequate to the story that needs to be told. Aaron Schneider has won our trust. And he runs with it.
"The Supply Chain coalesces around Matt Nowak, a man of stoic drive and stoppered love-traits that are reflected in the language itself, the structure of narrative. With confidence and surety, Schneider creates a gentle yet ever-persistent sense of menace, interspersing that tension with sentences so sensual, they made me gasp."
- Marianne Apostolides, author of I Can't Get You Out of My Mind
Aaron Schneider's The Supply Chain is refreshingly sharp and surprising. Equal parts odd and alluring, startlingly frank and complexly poetic, it is a deeply personal and political novel. Turning each page is like opening a door or asking a question-the writing is unendingly crafted to present its content in its truest form: mashing words, mixing poetry with prose, and not only subverting but toppling expectations about what a novel can or should be. Schneider is a masterful guide through the geographical and psychological landscape of living in the modern world, where the gory repercussions of war and political repartee are ever present but also bluntly estranged from the mundane, insipid privilege of the Canadian experience. In The Supply Chain, the fabric of society, those threads both perceived and invisible, are tightly interwoven with a person's psyche. The novel is bold, smart, and gorgeously blended, presenting Southwestern Ontario as an intricate tapestry that is undoubtedly fraying at the edges.
- Erica McKeen, author of Tear
Aaron Schneider takes us through castle dungeons, galleries, office parks, suburbs, and pools with a sociologist's precision, a poet's eye, and a swimmer's sense of when to breathe. Supply Chain shows us with blistering clarity the chilly self-delusions of the accomplice, the aider and abettor, the cog in the wheel. So come on in - the water's dark and deep.
- Geoffrey D. Morrison, author of Falling Hour
Schneider's return to the literary fiction world with Supply Chain brings us an important exploration of connection, disconnection, and growth in a decidedly familiar human context. Here is a story that immerses the reader in a living and breathing recreatement of what is for many people, a very familiar southern Ontario contemporary life. Here is an adaptive White Noise for Canadian Literature. Here we witness the absurdity of making a life out of what we are given, how subtle violences and lacerations can be scattered through the mundane choices one is often required to make, and how connection comes to us not when we seek it out nor expect, but when it chooses to. We feel the quiet and uniqueness of life in Schneider's thoughtful and well rendered characters and places. One that is both comforting and unsettling, but one that is fundamentally a living, breathing piece of being human in a world that is fundamentally anything but quiet and sweet.
- D.A. Lockhart, author of North of Middle Island (Kegedonce Press, 2023) and Breaking Right (Porcupine's Quill, 2021)
