Today I Learned It Was You
by Edward Riche
Toronto, ON: House of Anansi, 2016
280 pp $19.95
Out of Newfoundland comes delicious contemporary satire from one of its “home-grown” authors, Edward Riche. A versatile writer of stage and screen too, in this fourth novel, “Today I learned It Was You,” Riche plots the imagined happenings of people in St. John’s with a wit and wisdom we come to expect from Newfoundlanders. The reader is transported beyond the charming veneer of ‘candied colored’ houses rising from the city’s shoreline, to witness the goings-on of ‘real’ people living messy, chaotic lives.
Chapters are short and snappy, with several laugh out loud scenes.
Among the story’s shadowy but pivotal characters is Harry Davenant, a retired actor turned security guard and park recluse. When rumours spread via Facebook that Harry is ‘transitioning’ into a deer, local government is called to act. Enter former hockey player Mayor Matt Olford, a conventionally good looking man in his middle years. He will face temptation on both the home and career front as the novel unfolds.
Initiating the rumours about Harry, the half-man and half-deer—writing the script if you will—is aging, down-and-out author Lloyd Purcell. He visits city hall with his recently acquired love interest, the gullible Natalie Sommerville. “He’s harming no one out there,” reports the crafty Purcell about the “transitioning” deer. “”He spooks easily, so scarcely anyone has even noticed him.” “People want a selfie with him,” Sommerville chimes in. With tourists to consider, is Harry harmless or a nuisance? Matt Olford and his council must decide.
Meantime a Facebook page about Harry “had taken on a life of its own” with a “dynamic online community” known as “the Deer Friends.” “They all stood by Harry’s choice,” the author writes about the webpage, “and took this shared belief as an opportunity to post pictures of themselves and share other items distantly related to the matter of the one-time thespian’s adventure of self-discovery in the park.”
Also peopling the story is Gary Mackenzie, a RCMP officer from Ontario who “did not like Newfoundlanders” and desperately wants to be transferred off the island. Classy and lonely city councillor Alessandra Cappello has a much older husband with Alzheimer’s. Clownish councillor, Wally O’Neill gets on everyone’s nerves. “I knows, I knows,” O’Neill will say at meetings in a rich Newfoundland dialect, and “….one udder matter…”
The paths of these characters and their partners connect and disconnect as each seek resolution—both mundane and profound—by novel’s end. Riche proves the need for story—for deeper meaning—is still relevant (and entertaining), despite the superficiality of social media and “transitioning” lifestyles.
