Thirteen Shells
by Nadia Bozak
Toronto, ON: House of Anansi, 2016
320 pp, $19.95
Thirteen Shells is a coming-of-age novel about Shell, the only child of bohemian parents living in a small community outside Toronto in the late seventies and eighties. This is Nadia Bozak’s third novel and “parts of this book are adapted from childhood memories,” she tells readers, but “it is fundamentally a work of fiction.”
Bozak has an astute eye for the times, portraying Shell’s ‘boomer’ parents as drop outs who create art and live off the land, but later enrol in post-secondary institutions in order to re-gain a place in the mainstream world. Shell is the wiser child who won’t make the same mistakes, as she promises her mother at story’s end, but who still finds inspiration from the rebellious cultural icons of her own generation, such as Patti Smith.
Each of the thirteen chapters is as self-contained as Shell herself. Each could be a stand-alone short story describing a stage of Shells’ life. Unlike many novels depicting the protagonist’s adolescence, Shell’s journey contains more lightness than angst—and this is refreshing for the reader to behold.
Shell has a loving father-daughter relationship despite her father’s child-like eccentricities and her mother’s brewing irritability toward him. In one adventure, father and daughter hike along the forested ravine to pick fiddleheads for a local restaurant. “Dad shows Shell how to pick: gentle, right at the base,” the author writes. “The smell, each time, is a burst of both rotten and fresh. Shell tells Dad the fiddleheads look like they’re from pre-historic times. But they also look a bit like seafood and just-hatched birds.” This is a description of kindred spirits, and for Shell, their time together is valued.
Shell is eleven when her parents divorce, her father moving to Toronto. Shell’s ensuing visits to him always involve unpredictable experiences, but no matter, they are together and Shell is blithely non-judgemental, managing to cope with the upheavals of family life.
As an only child, Shell is introspective and drawn to outsiders such as the child she dubs “Shark Nose,” a former resident of her family’s house. Shell will meet him again in her teens, giving dimension to her widening world outlook. Shell befriends a girl down the street too and observes everything going on inside their family home, including the mother’s binge diets and the step-father’s unkind comments. It’s these telling observations as seen by Shell, which make the novel’s characters memorable.
Shell as a teen is smart, mildly rebellious and curious. She drinks and takes drugs with her peers and is attracted to Macek, a romantic drifter, who fills her dreams. On Sunday morning, when Shell stays in bed: “She reads The Time of the Ancient Mariner for about the tenth time since Mrs. Poole assigned it to the class last week, and then, eyes closed, she tries to not forget about Macek: voice like a rake pulled through gravel; the feathers of his shaggy hair falling back from cheeks dull with acne scars; rare smile showing off his Dracula teeth. “
Shell’s parents, despite their various struggles, continue giving their daughter gentle and loving attention. In turn, like a treasured seaside shell collection, Shell will hold on to fond memories despite the breakages along the way, as she moves in to adulthood. Unique as Shell herself, this is a novel that manages to remain realistic while providing touching moments of poetry and grace.
