Aubrey McKee
by Alex Pugsley,
Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2020
392 pp, $22.95
Aubrey McKee, the narrator of Alex Pugsley’s debut novel, is one of those smarty-pants guys you may want to smack one minute and then hug the next as he careens through life in this coming-of-age tour de force. And then you realize you want to do that with many of the characters who are gloriously and relentlessly human. They are flawed and fascinating.
Like his title character, Pugsley grew up in Halifax, and the novel is as much about the city as about a particular group of inhabitants, mostly the well-off. The McKees are not at the top of the social heap, but they are far from the bottom. Aubrey’s father is a lawyer, and his mother is an actor, who unlike many actors seems to work steadily at the Neptune Theatre. The fourteen loosely connected stories that comprise the novel focus on characters, but as Aubrey says in a brief Prologue, “I have decided to make good on a promise once made, to give expression to the lives I encountered, and to make sense of some of the mysteries that seemed to me the city’s truths.” Born in 1963, Aubrey takes readers through the first 22 years of his life by revealing the people and the city that affected him. The stories are not chronological, and occasionally Aubrey mentions in passing something that happens years later or includes flashbacks. It’s a complex structure that works well to reveal complex lives.
Aubrey has two older sisters, Carolyn and Bonnie, and two younger ones, Faith and Katie. He feels he lives in a world of women although that experience doesn’t help him figure them out. When the girls fight, a not infrequent occurrence, their mother tends to ignore them. Aubrey notes, “When indifference was futile, she could commit to the scene with the full force of her personality and in these moments the female members of my family seemed united in a singleness of lunacy.” With the exception of Caroline, who is poised and extremely mature for her age, all the family members have issues. And alcohol doesn’t help, whether it’s the parents’ drinking or Aubrey’s.
Intelligence and imagination are attractive to Aubrey, as is a facility with language. So it’s no surprise that five-year-old Aubrey becomes captivated by another little boy named Cyrus Mair as Cyrus is truly remarkable. Aubrey says he is a “whiz kid, scamp, mutant, contrarian pipsqueak, philosopher prince, pretender fink, boy vertiginous,” and part of the novel’s purpose appears to be Aubrey’s attempt to reveal, understand, and celebrate Cyrus. As teenagers, Cyrus and Aubrey form a group of boys and girls, their own “rebel alliance” called The Common Room. They bond for a time over their mutual desire to be and do something, something that is not prescribed by others. And for Aubrey, this group is essential. He says, “I gave my heart to them because they gave the possibilities of my life back to me.”
Pugsley excels at putting life on the page, mainly because he uses a profusion of concrete details. He out-Dickens Dickens. And it works. Most of the characters, as seen by Aubrey, are trying to figure out their identities, whatever age they are. So the material of life, the stuff , provides a stabilizing respite from the essential questions of being underlying much of this immensely rich book. Through Aubrey, Pugsley delves into Halifax history, pop culture, literature, music, depression, education, divorce, infidelity, sex, social status, friendship, family, and love. Aubrey’s early career as a drug dealer (he starts at twelve) is dealt with brilliantly. Pugsley shows how kids can fall easily fall into stupidity. And some survive.
Along with the detail and characterization, the language in this book is enthralling. It shifts between the vulgar (“fuck” is more frequent than commas in some parts), the everyday, and the elevated. Pugsley moves easily among the various registers just as he crafts comedy and tragedy. Haligonians are likely to recognize much more than I did as I’ve only spent about a week in that city (and it was in the summer), but anyone will recognize much of the angst and the humour of life. I laughed when I read that the kids call the mixture of alcohol stolen from parents’ liquor cabinets “moose piss.” Kids in Edmonton, where I lived as a teenager, called it “shit mix.” Here in Victoria, where I live, it’s probably called “whale piss.” And anyone can appreciate the desire for friends, for a place to belong, for a sense of self.
Yes, this is an ambitious novel. It delivers. Pugsley plans to continue the auto-biographical excursion, and I look forward to taking the journey.
Householders
by Kate Cayley
Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2021
238 pages, $22.95
Kate Cayley’s second collection of short stories, Householders, focusses on how place may help to shape character or perhaps reveal the already established elements of a character. The nine stories range in time, setting, and personal situation, but all are about the struggle to connect and the need to establish identity.
Four of the stories are directly linked by the characters’ experience of living on a commune, and the first one in this group is called “The Other Kingdom.” Two young women, Nancy and Carol, leave Toronto for a road trip in the US. It’s the 1970s, and they are doing what many young people did, looking for adventure and themselves. Cayley explores how the different backgrounds of Nancy (only child of academics) and Carol (child of small store owners) lead to different desires: “Carol was hoping to write an essay about protest movements and the Vietnam War. Naomi [originally Nancy] was hoping to find a new life.” Nancy’s transformation to Naomi comes when she becomes entranced by a preacher named John and stays to join his group. Eventually a commune is formed in the wilds of Maine. And yes, it could be considered a cult.
Carol and Naomi reappear in “Householders,” and it’s ten years later. Carol has become an academic (Women’s Studies), lives with her partner Laura, and owns a house. Naomi is still searching for her life. Through the linked stories, Cayley paints the lives of these two women and some of the others over time. Carol certainly has the most conventional life of all the characters (or am I thinking that as I teach at a college?). What Cayley has a gift for is getting into the minds and, more importantly, the hearts of characters far from the usual and revealing their humanity with a gentle incisiveness.
Religion takes another form in “Doc,” which features a gifted musician, who is also aging and self-destructive. A young writer, nicknamed “Smudge,” is sent by his brother Graham, a music producer, to Doc’s filthy and decrepit house in Texas to care for the man. It’s not an easy task, but Cayley has wisely revealed early in the story that the task will not last forever. Smudge describes his brother: “I thought of him . . . trying to look like a man who worked in a music store that sold porn under the counter, not like a music producer with a wife and children and a secret boyfriend only I knew about. I loved my brother even though he was full of shit. He’s dead now, too.” Smudge understands his brother, a man who eschews the trappings of the music business for a total focus on the music, saying, “All he wanted was to keep the music coming. He tried to impress on me how important this was, with the single-mindedness of a missionary planning the distribution of bibles.” What Smudge does for Doc is remarkable.
Helping others is also the center of “Pilgrims,” in which a woman is dedicated to caring for Stevie, the newly quadriplegic son of her partner Nickel, who unable to cope with the situation, has run off. Nickel also lived on a commune as child, and it sounds like it could be the one John ran. Stevie calls the woman Lady, and Lady creates an onscreen persona of a Franciscan nun, Sister Bernadette, in her blog, a blog to foster connection in the Christian community. The blog is complete fiction apart from the care for Stevie.
In a departure from the realism of the other stories, Cayley offers “A Beautiful Bare Room,” a grim excursion in to a world riven by a mysterious disease and the escape of the ultra-wealthy to underground bunkers. Okay maybe not that unrealistic so far. But then the story becomes one of attempted body snatching. However, the underlying issue is still very much one of identity, so the story fits thematically into the collection.
I have the sense that there are many more stories stemming from the commune, and I hope Cayley delves further into this material. After all, isn’t a commune a kind of ultimate community? And so many of the characters are searching for a place of belonging, whether it’s a grungy apartment in Berlin or a house in Toronto or even a car to sleep in. Cayley is grappling with big issues: love, family, friendship, belief, commitment, illness, death. And she does it well.
