Mahihkan Lake by R. P. MacIntyre

Mahihkan Lake, by R.P. MacIntyre (Thistledown Press 2015)

Sometimes I watch a movie without an explosion. It isn’t filmed in 3D and it doesn’t have computer generated animation.  There aren’t any death-defying stunts, either.  It’s straightforward and dependent upon character and dialogue.  Perhaps it’s something by Robert Altman or Woody Allen, or maybe it’s Denys Arcand or Jean-Marc Vallé.  It’s quietly funny and darkly serious all at once.  There is a touch of the absurd, and maybe even a moment of magical realism. This is a little like reading Mahihkan Lake, by R. P. MacIntyre.

              Following the somewhat mysterious death of their older foster-brother, Dave, estranged siblings Denny and Dianne are left to reassemble the pieces.  However, alcoholic Denny – the folk-singing, one hit wonder – is in dire need of an intervention.  And his younger sister, Dianne, who looks as though she stepped “straight out of a fashion magazine,” is already burdened with a rebellious teenage daughter and a floundering marriage – not to mention the care of their Alzheimer-stricken mother. 

              Reunited and argumentative, the two set out for the family cabin on Mahihkan Lake in the north of Saskatchewan, where their troubled brother once found solace.  Their intent is to make peace and scatter the remains, which are stored in a cookie jar.  At the same time, down-trodden Harold Huckaluk, the truck driver held responsible for the death of their brother, sets out on a quest of his own.  In a bizarre twist of fate and coincidence these three “strangers” are reunited on the shore of Lake Mahihkan one last time.   

              MacIntyre has a knack for concise description.  And setting plays a key role in the unfurling of this story.  The “thick green tangles” and the “low meadows of marshy drain” come alive in Mahihkan Lake.  The wild-life too contributes. A wolf, “its yellow eyes clear and forlorn,” follows Harold along his paddle north. And a pair of ravens cluck “like pebbles dropped into a wooden bucket half full of water.”  It is dialogue, however, that becomes the driving force behind this novel.  Philosophical discussions between Denny and Dianne circle around themes of happiness and memory – both as elusive as reconciliation and forgiveness amidst siblings.

              Surfacing throughout Mahihkan Lake is a secret that ebbs and flows like the river which fees it.  And there are no answers to the myriad metaphysical questions of its protagonists -- only moments which define them for good and for bad.  Mahihkan Lake is the bleak cinematic vision of an art-house film, which offers just enough illusory shimmer of hope and dark humour to keep you watching.  Or in this case, reading.

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Tarstopping by Christine Rehder Horne

Tarstopping, by Christine Rehder Horne (NeWest Press 2015)

Christine Rehder Horne’s debut novel, Tarstopping, is a quasi-political thriller minus the politicians.  It is a novel about environmental activism with Calgary as its epicenter. But if you’re searching for a simplistic rant about saving the world, you’ll be disappointed.  In its place, Tarstopping offers a complex argument for a complex issue.  

Middle-class Tim and Shannon find both their security and their presumptions threatened by the overnight arrival of environmental protesters in their affluent suburban neighbourhood.  The protesters have converged on Calgary in response to a kidnapping.  The messianic “Wendy and her Boys” are holding the family of an oil baron hostage in their own home.  The ransom is simple.  Shut down the Tar Sands.  

Tim and Shannon’s friends, many of whom work in fields related to the oil industry, are angry and maybe even a little afraid.  They argue vehemently and sometimes with vitriol about the best way to rid the city of its infestation.  Within their small nuclear family, Tim and Shannon occupy seemingly flip sides of the argument.  He is the director of a non-profit serving the city’s poor.  She runs her own event-planning company catering to a corporate clientele.  Their son, Armie -- a twenty-year-old university dropout – doesn’t know here he stands. 

Enter Deke, Tim’s crusading brother, a blogger and environmentalist who quickly becomes the chronicler and unofficial voice of the Tarstoppers.

Tensions run high as the city becomes the locus of a movement that draws protesters from across Canada and around the world. At first, Tim and Shannon are unwitting observers. One of the largest encampments is established in the park and school grounds across the street. But soon even they are drawn in.  Tim opens his home as a temporary shelter from a storm, and even as an ad hoc medical station, after things turn dark.  Shannon, for her part, becomes the target of a mysterious stalker, parading as a journalist.

In response to the Tarstoppers another anomalous group forms at the edges of town.  The Wildcatters are right-wing radicals and local rednecks looking to crack heads, initially.  But things grow quickly out of hand once mob mentality sets in.

There is a lot of talk in the opening scene of this novel – perhaps a little too much exposition – as the author seeks a way to lay out the intricate setting, both temporal and psychological, which might realistically give rise to such a spontaneous congregation, as well as the incidents and beahviours which eventually flow from it.  However, once the story gains traction – and it does – Tarstopping is a compelling and suspenseful read.   

Horne approaches the thriller the way Henning Mankell approached to crime writing.  Her protagonists are intelligent, refined, and well-educated.  They are victim to marital issues and parental anxieties.  Their jobs are at once fulfilling and, at times, all-consuming and problematic.  However, Tim and Shannon do not check these lives at the door once the Tarstoppers arrive.  If anything, the protest and its spinoffs play second fiddle to their more personal stories.  As with Mankell’s detective, Kurt Wallander, both Tim and Shannon dispatch with the plot “in the midst of life – of work and family and the intrusion of tensions from the outside world.”  They grapple with the events unfolding around them at the same time as they tackle their personal difficulties.  And sometimes the two are indistinguishable.

As such, the ideological struggle taking place between the Tarstoppers and the Wildcatters is eventually mirrored in the lives of Tim and Shannon, their friends and family members. What is most frightening in this, is that their reactions are often no less polarized or violent.  A close family friend says to Shannon, “The last thing those people have is balance.  I wouldn’t have realized how many unbalanced people there are in the world.”

If there is a central theme in Tarstopping, this is it.  We can marvel at our ability to come together and fight for what we believe, but sometimes we must recoil from the petty sight of our own self-interest and the extent to which we might go to protect it.


Tarstopping interweaves the personal and the global with a deft hand. 

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The Winter Family by Clifford Jackman

The Winter Family, by Clifford Jackman (Random House 2015)

You will not find many sympathetic characters in Clifford Jackman’s debut novel.  But then again, sympathy is hardly an accurate litmus test for good literature.  Hateful characters can still be good characters.  And the Winter Family has plenty of both.

                The Winter Family traces the trajectory of a loose band of outlaws over the course of three decades. Chronologically, it begins in Georgia during the last gasp of the American Civil War. Sherman’s troops are blazing their historic path through the state after the fall of Atlanta.  A small advance army, headed by the psychopath, Quentin Ross, contains the seed which will become the Winter Family. Their horrific penchant for violence – particularly their actions in Planter’s Factory -- is what causes the Union Army to disown them, sending the group north and west to Chicago in 1872 on a bizarre quest for pardons. 

By now, they have all become hardened criminals.  Stories of their intervening years and the vicious trail behind them percolate to the surface. But all tales pale when compared to that of Augustus Winter – a bit player in Quentin Ross’ early band, now among the most feared and depraved. The very glance of Winter’s yellow, cat-like eyes is enough to instill terror. His arrival in Chicago with the fiendish Lukas Shakespeare – a teenage murderer -- causes a rift among the outlaws.  And his dissolute dispatching of his foes forces one member to fall “to his knees, among startled, scampering pigs” and begin to throw up. “We’re building something here,” he tells the man.

                But “building” is a misnomer.  Driven by a nihilistic worldview, Winter is really tearing things down. He has moved beyond simplistic notions of society, justice, and order.  He has transcended them. He says, “This is how everything works.  Everything they tell you is just a lie to hide it.”

Having peeled back the gloss of civilization, Winter leads his gang south to Phoenix in 1881. They have now become scalp hunters and guns for hire. Casual slaughter follows them. But here, Augustus Winter is shaken by an encounter from the past. His convictions are challenged by an unlikely opponent. And the unstoppable wickedness which is the Winter Family runs up against a force of nature equal to or greater than their own.

Ten years transpire before we pick up their scent again in Oklahoma, and this time it is they who are hunted. Reduced by death and desertion, The Winter Family is on the verge of extinction. The world, and members of his inner circle, has turned on him.  Cataclysmic violence, apparent throughout, erupts in an almost cinematic showdown.

Jackman’s writing has been compared to the American author, Cormac McCarthy. On the surface, similarities do exist.  Both write about hard-scrabble men cutting swaths through various incarnations of an amoral, lawless West. But where McCarthy’s prose is sparsely elegiac, Jackman’s is more grounded and straightforward. The emphasis is on action. Jackman’s characters are also not as archetypal. The Judge, for instance, from McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is practically cloven-hoofed – a metaphor for the evil in the world. Winter, a scalp-hunter like the Judge, for all his savagery, is still a man.  We witness the twisting of his soul through upbringing and experience.

Therefore, as a man, he is subject to his own mortality.  Or is he?  

There is nothing overly redemptive about the conclusion of this novel. If anything, the brief epilogue in California, 1900, reminds the reader that malevolence endures. But like the hateful characters of Quentin Ross, Lukas Shakespeare, and Augustus Winter himself prove, redemption isn’t necessary in a good novel.

Daddy Lenin by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Daddy Lenin, by Guy Vanderhaeghe (McClelland & Stewart 2015)

Guy Vanderhaeghe built his early reputation as a short story writer.  His debut collection, Man Descending, secured him the first of two Governor General Awards in a career that has also garnered him shortlist nods for both the Giller and the Dublin IMPACT, among his many accolades. Arguably, his current reputation among readers is staked upon his more recent loose trilogy of novels, which terminated in The Last Crossing.  Daddy Lenin marks Vanderhaeghe’s return to the short story genre after a twenty-three year hiatus.  Evidently, time has not blunted his purpose.

              The measure of a good short story should be how easily it can be held in the hand.  Like a cut stone, the reader should be able to turn it over and hold it to the light – to enjoy the unity of purpose each facet contributes to its fashioning.  The short story stays with you in a way the novel, in its length and complexity, cannot.  A good short fits in the pocket.  In this way, the nine stories of Daddy Lenin might be a master class in the genre.

These are the stories of men, primarily.  Men searching for purpose.  Men struggling for relevance.  Men reflecting on lives lived and not lived.  Men all too aware of the “tick tock” of their own mortality, and how their passage will be weighed or found wanting in the end. Even the teenaged Troy, in the collection’s opening story, “The Jimi Henrix Experience,” is forced to take a long, hard look at the abyss of an old man’s photo albumn.  An experience which leaves him thinking, “It’s no different from staring into the blank television screen.  The snow shifting, forming faces of famous people locked in the circuitry from old programs.  The hiss of static turning into favourite songs, guitar chords whining and dying.”  An experience so bleak and frightening that it leaves him “running through the late-afternoon stillness of an empty suburban street…where the sun is either coming up or going down.”

In similar fashion, the collection’s title story examines the recently retired, Jack Corbin – failed academic and disgruntled husband – who rediscovers an old mentor and professor whom he holds responsible for his unhappiness.  Jack sets out to redeem himself, bolstered by a late opportunity to seek a revenge of sorts – against the man, against his wife.  But Jack’s disappointment is foreshadowed in his inability to win a mid-story “staring contest” he unwittingly enters with a mysterious stranger.  “Heart banging, he lowered his eyes, and before he knew it his feet were carrying him away…he couldn’t say why this Disney-enchanted-kingdom nightmare filled him with such anxiety and apprehension.” Like Troy, who had seen his future measured out in another man’s photo albumn, Jack comes face to face with his past and his present, “the place to which every step and misstep he had ever made had been leading him for years.”

In spite of these bleak endings, Vanderheaghe’s stories offer both humour and stoicism, as well.  The former is best evident in the aging, acerbic tongue of Uncle Ted, in “Counselor Sally Brings Me to the Tunnel”; the latter, in the attitude of Billy Constable, who in “Live Large” catches “again the bird-like cloud on this morning’s horizon, when everything seemed salvageable.” But most importantly, these stories offer courage.  In worlds where media and the working-class father figures of a bygone age have left Vanderhaeghe’s protagonists bereft of applicable role models, in steps Charley Brewster.  The climax of “Tick Tock” should bring back images of Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino.

If you read short stories, this collection will confirm your faith in the genre. If you don’t, this just might convert you. The stories of Daddy Lenin are ultimately brilliant bits of prestidigitation, satisfying and full blown in their revelations.   

Blurbs: Passing Through by David Penhale

Passing Through, by David Penhale (Cormorant 2011)

Why you should read it:

The sudden redundancy of Penhale's protagonist, Daniel Foster, is a metaphor for the modern world.  A man who rode the wave of shady banking and investments finds himself abandoned and bereft by the corporate culture which originally "fostered" him. The writing is wry and the characters unsentimental in this quest for relevance and reinvention.

Friendly Fire

Friendly Fire, by Lisa Guenther (NeWest Press 2015)

To call Lisa Guenther’s debut novel a mystery is a bit superficial, and possibly reductive.  At the heart of Friendly Fire there is indeed a secret, but it is only the engine which drives her story – the vehicle she uses to reveal the complex dynamics of family and small town relationships.  And Guenther, an agricultural journalist from Livelong, Saskatchewan, knows a thing or two about both.

              When Darby Swank, a university dropout, accidentally discovers the body of her beloved aunt floating in Brightsand Lake, the veil through which she viewed her tiny rural community is lifted to reveal the violence and wilful ignorance that may always have existed just beneath the surface.  The comfort and safety she sought in leaving school and returning home are pulled from beneath her, and Darby is forced to re-examine her relationships with family and friends, including her on-again-off-again lover, Luke, her silent father, and her fun-loving uncle Will.

              In spite of the fact that Darby’s lucid dreams may be subconsciously leading her toward the killer, she is a reluctant protagonist.  Like the community around her, Darby prefers to let sleeping dogs lie.  She tells a friend, “Things don’t usually work out too well for the whistle blowers, you know.”

              The strength of Guenther’s story is its characters.  They are – all of them – flawed in very human ways, including the novel’s protagonist.  And the author does her best to skirt stereotypes while maintaining the truth which sometimes lies at the heart of stereotype.  In a thumbnail sketch, Darby exposes the distrust and fear she harbours for outsiders at her aunt’s funeral:

Women in dark bootleg jeans, tailored blouses, and pointy heals, big sunglasses hiding eyes.  Men in sports coats and ties, one of them subtly checking his PDA … I want to smash his gadgets, break the women’s sunglasses.  Drive the strangers out of the lobby like rats from a grain elevator.

At the same time, this juxtaposition reveals everything she and her community are not – stylish and urbane.  Both things Darby perhaps desires to be herself, had she the courage to leave town and pursue her music in Edmonton.

              In many ways, Darby is stifled, as much as protected, by the illusions of rural life. “Families, relationships, they literally mark our landscape out here,” she says.  “You don’t say, ‘Turn left at the green house.’ You say, ‘Turn left at the old McNab house.’  It is these attachments to family and landscape that pin her down and stop her from pursuing her music.  But it is also these entanglements that stop her from uncovering the mystery of her aunt’s murder, even when the answer lies before her in plain view:

I was missing something.  It was like sitting in a boat and watching jackfish swimming.  You can never figure out exactly where they are because of the way the light bends when it hits the surface.

              However, the truth cannot stay buried forever.  Like the brush fire that burns literally and metaphorically throughout this novel, threatening the community, “smouldering deep in the muskeg,” the truth must eventually “flare up.”

              In the end, Guenther’s novel is a well-paced character study with a strong sense of place.

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Blurbs: Caught by Lisa Moore

Caught, by Lisa Moore (House of Anansi 2013)

Why you should read it:

Moore's writing has a sixth sense. There are moments in this novel that are so real and so raw that reading it is like staring at a Polaroid -- striking for its immediacy and voyeuristic in its candour.

Blurbs: Just Beneath My Skin by Darren Greer

Just Beneath My Skin, by Darren Greer (Cormorant Books 2014)

Why you should read it:

A sense of dread descends like a curtain over this novel the deeper you delve into it. And yet, like a bystander at an accident, the reader cannot turn away. Greer pulls no punches.

Blurbs: Interference by Michelle Berry

Interference by Michelle Berry (ECW 2014)

Why you should read it: 

Berry captures the quiet desperation of her suburban characters in this claustrophobic, deftly plotted novel. Interference seethes with sinister possibilities.

The Cat's Table

The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart 2011)

The Cat's Table is the story of eleven-year-old "Mynah's" voyage from Ceylon to England aboard the passenger liner, Oronsay, in the early 1950s. It is Ondaatje's sixth novel.  However, while it may share many things that readers have come to expect from an Ondaatje story -- marginal characters  and quasi-mythical histories -- it does not begin with the same attention to language, or the same initimate intensity.  In fact, in the beginning, it is much more reminiscent of the author's memoir, Running In the Family.

That being said, Cat's Table most certainly holds the reader's interest through an episodic, haphazard plot, reflective of the fact that it is the excavation of a child's memory (albeit told in retrospect by an adult).

Halfway through the novel, however, Cat's Table undergoes a transformation.  Mynah's child-like observations give way to the far more introspective "Michael" -- Mynah's adult incarnation (as fate would have it, a famous author). "Ramadhin's Heart" is a brilliant, touching episode which demonstrates the author's narractive strengths.  It is here that the reader realizes just how attached he has become to the disparate characters, through their random misadventures. 

In addition, forgotten threads of story find their way back into the weft hereafter, and tighten their grip on the reader.  Previously dropped stitches seem suddenly purposeful, and out of thin air, a mystery beings to unfold. 

While it would be difficult to argue that Cat's Table is Ondaatje's best artistry to date, it is certainly his most accessible. Diehard fans of Ondaatje the prose stylist, may be disappointed here; however, the author will win over new audiences with this stripped down tale.

Garcia's Heart

Garcia’s Heart by Liam Durcan (McClelland & Stewart 2007)

With the publication of Garcia’s Heart by Liam Durcan, yet another Canadian doctor throws his hat into the ring. Who knew there were so many with literary aspirations?

In this debut novel, Durcan dances across the corpus callosum, proving that the combination of medicine and literature – the left and right brain – make for good fiction. Garcia’s Heart tackles difficult moral conundrums, like the nature of good and evil, innocence and culpability. It also, to a lesser extent, delves into the responsibility of the individual in an increasingly amoral corporate world. Durcan serves up these meditations in a topical exploration of the vagaries of the World Court, and not without a smattering of mystery.

Patrick Lazerenko, an expat Canadian living and working in Boston, learns that his former boss and mentor, Hernan Garcia, is to stand trial in Den Haag for crimes against humanity. He is accused of aiding and abetting the torture of political dissidents in his homeland of Honduras during the turbulent 1980s. Patrick leaves his job – a company he founded – during a critical juncture in order to attend the trial and discern the truth about the man he so well respected.

Complicating matters is the possibility the Patrick might be subpoenaed by either side of the case. The defence wishes to employ his unique expertise as a neuroscientist to discuss Hernan’s ability to judge right from wrong, while the prosecution suspects Patrick withholds damning testimony.

Ah, yes. Did I mention that Hernan’s daughter, Celia, is Patrick’s former lover?

The plot requires much telling to unravel the truth. But it is sufficiently compelling to keep the reader interested. The character of Patrick is also a well-crafted invention, vacillating, pondering, and loving unrequitedly in a very believable fashion.

However, when dealing with highly technical and specialized fields such as neuroscience and law – let alone juggling both in a single novel – an author runs the risk of losing his reader in the minutiae. As affirmed by the novel’s protagonist, "any interesting job could be reduced to a series of bureaucratic functions." Garcia’s Heart stumbles in and out of this mire on a few occasions.

The diction and sentence structure here can also reflect the cumbersome topics. Appositives, subliminal interjections, multiple clauses, and dense vocabulary can combine to create some tricky prose from time to time:

"He was also, despite his designation as protege, miserable in the office where his recent arrival and prepubescent appearance combined with the insecurity of the business-types to bleed credibility from him...with a bit of supportive psychotherapy and an implied challenge to his intelligence – motivational tactics Patrick had mastered as a thesis supervisor – he agreed to stay."

Ultimately, these are small quibbles. Garcia’s Heart is a confident debut novel that will leave you wondering "what had to happen for a life to double in on itself, for separate trajectories to form and diverge, and if living this lie took as great a toll as another having to discover it."

October

October by Richard B. Wright (Harper Collins 2007)

I am always surprised by how much I enjoy Richard B. Wright’s work. It all seems so simple and straight-forward in the telling. October is no exception. The plot is uncomplicated; the language, unadorned. And yet the story resonates long after you put it down.

While travelling in England to visit his cancer-stricken daughter, retired professor James Hillyer chances upon an acquaintance whom he has not encountered in more than sixty years. Gabriel Fontaine, once a sixteen-year-old boy befriended by James during a summer vacation, is now aged and infirm – just as close to death’s door as his own daughter. Friendless, but for a hired nurse, Gabriel requests of James something so intimate and bizarre that it would tax even the thickest of friendships. However, as it stands, the two men were never more than acquaintances of proximity who could little more than tolerate each other’s company at times. And James finds that even now, sixty years after the fact, he is still jealous and bitter over the young woman Gabriel won from him that fateful summer.

Nonetheless, compassion carries the day, and less than forty-eight hours later, James finds himself on a flight to Switzerland in the company Gabriel and his young nurse.
Part love story, and part meditation on mortality, October shifts back and forth between the present and the past, from England and Switzerland to the summer of 1944 in the coastal village of Perce, Quebec.

The secret to Wright’s success in this novel is his economy of language, and the concision with which he is able to sketch the most believable and psychologically complex characters at that exact moment in their lives when they are grappling with humanity’s most important mysteries. In October, Wright demonstrates a keen grasp of the complicated emotions within any relationship, and he uses this understanding to weave a story that is not only believable, but, in fact, inevitable.

October is a case of all the right words in all the right places.

Stormy Weather

Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles (Harper Collins 2007)

Stormy Weather is the follow-up novel to Paulette Jiles’ wildly popular and critically acclaimed first novel, Enemy Women. With it, she proves, without a doubt, that her writing has staying power.

Stormy Weather is the story of Jeanine Stoddard, her sisters, and their mother. Deserted and humiliated by their mercurial father and husband, Jack Stoddard, the women must negotiate the uncharted world of East and Central Texas during the Great Depression.

Jeanine, the middle-child, skinny and fierce, leads her mother and sisters out of the oil fields and back to the abandoned Tolliver farm of her mother’s childhood. There, they struggle to survive drought, dust storms, back taxes, injury, and the stigma of poverty.

But while the Great Depression and its hardships are common fodder for fiction, Jiles’ story of rough and tumble East Texas, its oil fields, its illegal horse racing, and its unforgettable characters is fresh enough.

Her prose, too, is vital, sweeping over vast distances in time and space at one moment, and honing into focus on a single scene the next. It is difficult to shake certain images in this book, such as the blind man who helps Jeanine load her drunken father into the family jalopy. Or the moment she catches her neck-scarf in the gearbox of an ancient tractor. The scene with Jeanine’s sister Bea at the well is transfixing, and the night Jeanine last speaks to her father in the family shed is also haunting.

The one problem with this novel might be the end. It cannot be said that Jeanine and her family do not undergo hardship in this story; however, I am wary of stories that end too well. They seem unlikely. And while Jiles does try to temper this fortune, it still smacks a little of Hollywood.

Nonetheless, Stormy Weather will lead you by the nose. A great read.

The Culprits

The Culprits by Robert Hough (Random House Canada 2007)

I want to say that this book was entertaining, because I could hardly set it down – but I fear that this description might only belittle Hough’s accomplishment. A book can be measured in many ways: its craft (how the story is told), and its purpose (what is being told), are chief among them. But sometimes there is also an unidentifiable quality derived from the perfect combination of these other elements. This is the case with The Culprits.

Hank Wallins, a former merchant sailor cum lonely computer operator, lives through a near-death experience. Does his life flash before his eyes? Does he realize the futility of his existence? Does this realization send him packing to the Himalayas to tackle Everest? To the Amazon? No. But he does begin searching www.FromRussiaWithLove.com hoping against all odds to find that certain special someone to fill the perceived hole in his life gaping.

When he discovers Anna Verkoskova née Mikhailovna, a near-pretty student from St. Petersburg with a wandering eye, Hank is hooked. The resulting story draws both he and "Anya" into a baffling and complicated tale of love, loss, and ... international terrorism.

Woven by one of the most ingenious and fascinating narrators in recent history, this novel juggles the madcap with the sober, the tragic with the comic. It flirts with the melodramatic as often as it plays with the improbable, without ever actually crossing either line. Its humour and wit give weight to its eventual calamity, and its voice – full of the sing-song qualities of Slavic constructions – is as endearing as a Dr. Seuss fable. In short, it is a fine balance.

"Life is a deception," we are told in the novel’s opening paragraph. "If we could scrub away the lichen and peer at life with clear vision ...its entirety would overwhelm us." Indeed, we are almost overwhelmed by the lives and events in The Culprits. However, with Hough, we are in good hands. After leading us through the fray by the nose, he delivers us safely on the other side where "there are watermelons, everywhere....juicy and sweet and through black soil sprouting."

The End of the Alphabet

The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson (Doubleday Canada 2007)

This first novel by book designer CS Richardson is really little more than a novella. But it is a gem. Simple and direct in the telling, The End of the Alphabet is an adult fable with a bittersweet ending.

Ambrose Zephyr, the creative mind behind a London advertising agency, learns that he has an illness of "inexplicable origin," and, as a result, little more than a month to live – "give or take a day." He is married to Zappora Ashkenazi, though childless, and still very much in love. In short, he is not ready to leave this world. His wife is not ready to have him leave her.

His plan is straightforward, if a little eccentric. As a boy Ambrose wrote away to embassies and consulates for travel brochures. He collected news about the world. He was also enamoured with alphabets and typefaces. He combined these two loves in a series of illuminated lists. "D is for a beach in the Dutch Antilles, E is for the windy coast of Elba..." Now, in his desperation, he digs out these long-forgotten lists as a guidebook for his final days on earth – a journey both geographical and spiritual.

If this sounds gimmicky, it is. But the novel’s opening sentence tells us "this story is unlikely."

The characters are revealed rather than developed to any great extent, and the author uses broad strokes to reflect on mortality, art, history, and the idea of home. Still, the resulting text is poignant in its restraint. The prose is spare. The humour wry.

It is short enough to be digested of an evening, and potent enough to remain with you afterward.

The Outlander

The Outlander by Gil Adamson (House of Anansi 2007)

Gil Adamson’s first novel is a yarn well-spun, full of improbable, implausible, and near-mythical events. It is the stuff of legend, with one foot planted firmly in accurate history, and one foot treading the ether-sphere of picaresque adventure.

Mary Boulton is a murderess, plain and simple. One may argue that she is the victim of postpartum depression, or overwhelming grief at the death of her child; she may even be insane with jealousy over her husband’s indiscretions. But no matter which way you slice it, Mary pulled the trigger that blew a hole in her husband’s thigh "so the bone came out the back...[and] a pink mist suffused the air." Then she "sat down to wait" as he bled out on the floor of their isolated cabin. "Eventually, she took up her sewing."

On the lam, Mary scrambles half-crazed into the Crowsnest Pass and through the rocky mountains, pursued at first by dogs, and later by something more sinister – her late-husband’s brothers. Mary is taken in, befriended, apprenticed, and loved by a host of eccentric characters throughout her flight. She bears witness and survives the Frank Landslide at Turtle Mountain where "for a full minute, the mountain seemed to billow, then slowly collapse, floating downward." But always and relentlessly, she is hunted by "red-headed brothers with rifles across their backs...and fine black boots."

Adamson recreates turn-of-the-century Canada and its vast tracks of wilderness in assiduous detail. Her language is poetic and elevating, so that even the harsh savagery of the land and its inhabitants take on an otherworldliness, a sweeping cinematic beauty.

Conversely, however, the novel’s history can hijack the story. Each character Mary encounters or rubs up against during her adventures opens a new world to be explored and plumbed by the author. This can take wind from the novel’s sails. Fortunately, we have the brothers to get us back on track.

All in all, it is an engrossing tale. One may well have to suspend disbelief while reading The Outlander, but Adamson does well to remind us that books still have the power to transport us beyond the mundane.

Bottle Rocket Hearts

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall (Cormorant Books 2007)

Zoe Whittall’s first novel is a simple story. Girl meets girl. Girl loses girl. Girl wins girl back again. Girl realizes aforementioned girl was no good for her in the first place. Girl leaves girl, once and for all.

Essentially, Bottle Rocket Hearts is a coming of age story set in Montreal in the mid-nineties, complicated by the sexuality of its protagonist. Eve’s in love for the first time with the wrong girl and she gets her heart broken. After a brief, precarious rapprochement, she patches it up again and moves on, "soft and furious."

There’s a lot of clubbing, drinking, some drugs, some more drugs, a little more clubbing. The plot itself is not overly compelling. Told from the first person, in a more than convincing late adolescent voice, the story of Eve’s heartbreak can sometimes be a little claustrophobic, like watching someone pick at a scab.

The narrative does, however, scratch the surface of several deeper issues, such as senseless violence against women/homosexuals, or the ravage of AIDS amongst the queer community. There’s a brief comparison of Quebec’s search for identity with Eve’s own personal quest. But these threads run close to the surface. Ultimately, they are the backdrop to failed love.

Whittall is a talented writer. And that talent is most evident in the minutiae – thumbnail sketches of iridescent detail, like photographs taken in harsh light. Her writing has teeth. It bites. Hard. Upon finding her girlfriend in bed with someone else, Eve feels "a quick incision between her seventh and eighth ribs ... then several quick kisses with a staple gun to [her] gum-line...a sock in the teeth for good measure."

On another occasion Eve stops by a strip-club for the first time to meet a friend. Once inside, she feels "like a raggedy kindergarten teacher with finger paint on her face. Totally asexual. Like a houseplant."

There is also a brief funeral scene which, more than any other episode in the novel, captures what it means to be young and gay and struggling for identity. "There is a rift between family and friends in the church, a weirdness that comes when your closest family has no idea who your closest friends are. Two camps that loved the same person separately, like there were two funerals happening at once."

The author’s insight and acuity in these situations bode well for the future. Bottle Rocket Hearts is an intriguing debut.

The Reckoning of Boston Jim

The Reckoning of Boston Jim by Claire Mulligan (Brindle and Glass 2007)

A reckoning is a settling of accounts – the tallying of a balance sheet. It is also, in the biblical sense, an accounting of one’s life. Claire Mulligan’s first novel is the story of many such reckonings, a story of bonds, and of the quest for balance.

Boston Jim Milroy (if that is his real name) is a protagonist of Byronic proportions. He is haunted by memories which are all too vivid, and by those he cannot quite recall. His body is indelibly and mysteriously scarred, and, he believes, cursed as well. He is a former Hudson’s Bay man, and now a lone trapper subsisting at the edges of a burgeoning colony in a sort of self-imposed exile.

It is midway through the nineteenth century, and life is hard on the wild British Columbian coast. So when Boston Jim unwittingly suffers the simple kindness of Dora Hume, he becomes obsessed with the notion of recompensing her for the deed, proving "once an exchange is made it creates a bond, however tenuous."

His quest manages to land him in jail, endure a beating, and eventually drive him north along the unfinished Cariboo Wagon Road to safeguard and retrieve the bumbling, pompous, and pitiful Eugene Augustus Hume – the only suitable compensation for the woman Dora, according to Boston Jim’s reckoning.

The writing is lush and vivid in its detail. It carefully evokes a world precariously poised between old and new, civilization and savagery. It is a world in flux, and oftentimes out of balance. In fact, Boston Jim’s struggle for reckoning is but a microcosm for the larger problems of humanity, and, as such, his tragic attempt to restore that balance.

Unfortunately, a perfect reckoning is not always with our grasp. And herein lies the strength of this novel. Replete with many truisms, The Reckoning of Boston Jim doles out its justice blindly. Good guys do not always win, and bad guys do not always receive their just desserts. Instead, in Mulligan’s own words, "our world cracks into great unequal pieces."

Coureurs De Bois

Coureurs De Bois by Bruce MacDonald (Cormorant Books 2007)

Coureurs de Bois does not feel like a first novel. MacDonald’s voice is confident and self-assured. The writing grabs you by the throat in a no-holds-barred, drag down, knock out bout from the opening sentence.

Randall "Cobb" Seymour has a mission from Crow the Creator. Newly released from prison, this "monster" of a man – half Mohawk, half Ojibway – enters the world of the white man like the proverbial bull in the china shop. He quickly builds an empire out of illegal cigarette sales, running weed, prescription drugs and other scams for kicks. He has a chip on his shoulder that dates back generations.

William Tobe, a visionary economics student from the University of Ottawa, drops off the radar following graduation and resurfaces in Toronto as Cobb’s unlikely partner in crime. They are prophets, both of them, in their own way. People who can "guide and see." Together they subvert the system like 17th century coureurs de bois – the earliest venture capitalists to visit North America – turning their newly created fortune into vast tracks of Costa Rican rainforest, with the ultimate goal of selling carbon bonds in some distant dream economy.

The testosterone is thick here, so is the symbolism. Cobb realizes early in the novel that the white man has "liberated himself from the pigmentation of his skin, from his sex, his hair, his age, and his place. The white man was an idea, like money, a commodity." Cobb is his anti-thesis, "a man with the powerful and purposeful stride of a mountain cat." A man of action who is given over almost entirely to eating, drinking, and fornicating. A man in touch with his animal self. And Will, for his part, is quick to ascertain that in the modern world "there is nothing left to believe in." So the two of them set about creating their own system of beliefs based on barter and exchange, for, as they discover, "need has a power of its own."

Set in a seedy stretch of Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, Coureurs de Bois is a novel where the insane speak oracular truths and a female Christ figure – complete with virgin birth – attempts to kill herself, shocked by the "absolute horror of the human condition." The characters here are full-blown and fascinating. The pacing is immaculate. The humour black, intelligent, and just as likely to reinforce a stereotype as deflect one.

It’s a shame that it doesn’t have a truckload of promotional money to propel it into the Canadian consciousness. Exceptional.

As Good As Dead

As Good As Dead: a cautionary tale by Stan Rogal (Pedlar Press 2007)

Stan Rogal’s As Good As Dead is nothing if not entertaining. It is an absurdist romp through the world of publishing and entertainment. In the late 1990s, I had the chance to read and review two of Rogal’s earlier works of fiction, and like them, As Good As Dead has the same voyeuristic quality. That is to say that reading this novel is like passing an accident on the 401; although startling and twisted – and maybe even a bit horrific at turns – you cannot help but slow down and take a look.

Victor (Vic) Stone is a forty-five-year-old writer, of poetry mostly, who has settled into a grove that suits him. He is not wildly happy, but neither is he particularly dejected with his lot. He has a small press publisher, Vigilante Editions, that is more than willing to turn out a slim volume of poetry for him every few years, a New Age ex-wife who continues to care for him long after their split, and a bit on the side with a married mother of two. Add the occasional bottle of Jack, and things are good.

It isn’t until a Hollywood schlock-meister offers him a million dollars for the movie rights to his first, and only, novel that life gets complicated.

Vic opens his stream-of-consciousness tale with a question: how did Jack Kerouac feel the morning he woke up famous? And while we suspect Vic’s story to elucidate this point, the waters get a little muddied along the way. We do learn that people treat him differently once Hollywood comes knocking: "...I’ve made it, I’m getting out, I’ve achieved what others can only dream of, and no matter that we’re buddies and they want to be happy for me, there’s no shaking the fact that they’re stuck." Old friends turn him down for drinks.

But what he also discovers while guesting on an episode of Oprah is that "people are listening to me, actually hanging on my every word. Moreover, they are affected by the things I say." And this blind adherence to the cult of personality is what irks him most.

For Vic is a cynic (who oddly is also a "firm believer in love at first sight"), and deep down, he cannot reconcile his commercial success with his artistic integrity. People who have never read his work, and probably wouldn’t like it if they did, are now courting him for his opinions.

It is the age-old dilemma of the "indie" artist. He longs for success and approbation, but openly believes that the unwashed masses cannot possibly appreciate the intelligence of his work. So if he is suddenly embraced by the mainstream, he must have sold out and written something "unadventurous...stamped indelibly with either a Hallmark card happy face or a drippy-dippy glycerine tear, totally accessible, easily consumed and digestible, utterly forgettable and nothing to stick to the ribs or agitate the brain."

However, this is not the only rant up Vic’s sleeve. As Good As Dead is a slim, satirical narrative punctuated by "Howls" – of the Ginsbergian persuasion. Vic sounds off on cell phones, telemarketing, the media, New Age religions, and even the word "actually." These come hot and heavy, especially in the first third of the book, and although they are humourous, their frequency can be distracting at times.

There is also the matter of the novel’s turn toward the surreal in the latter stages. Without giving away too much, following Vic’s screamingly uncomfortable appearance on Oprah, the plot moves beyond a satirical tongue-in-cheek look publishing success and becomes a rather surprising story of cat-and-mouse chases and conspiracy theories.

The final chapter does much to save the novel from this radical departure by employing a kitschy deus ex machina that works well with something the protagonist ruminated over earlier; however, you have to stay with it in order to find out where the author is going.

In the end, it’s the character of Vic that carries the day here. He’s the sort of crazy drunk you want to meet in the early stages of a party when he’s still sober enough to be witty and drunk enough to say what he shouldn’t be saying.