Best Canadian Poetry 2023,
edited by John Barton,
Biblioasis, 192 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-77196-499-9
The annual arrival of the Best Canadian Poetry is always a cause for a celebration as it’s a bundle of delights. Somehow the editors manage to find, maybe not the best as who knows what that is, but a wonderful and varied selection of recently published poems. Over the years, the contents have become even more varied as the editors reflect both their personal taste and readers’ interest in poems written by all kinds of people.
And the editors’ introductions are always fascinating. In her introduction to the terrific 2021 collection (there was no 2022), editor Souvankham Thammavongsa notes that she paid no attention to the name of the poet but looked only at the poem and selected accordingly: “I didn’t pay attention to the name of the writer, how many books they’d published, what prizes they’d won. It’s possible to be no one, to have no book, to make work that is meaningful and valuable and beautiful without a crown or someone else’s say-so.” Thammavongsa encourages writers to forget about confidence: “A poet doesn’t need courage. You can be scared and write with that fear.” And the 2021 collection includes numerous voices who captured their fear and put it on the page. And that was before the pandemic.
John Barton’s lengthy introduction to the 2023 collection writes about his process of selection when he was an editor of Arc and The Malahat Review (he is now retired), and notes that he employed it for the 2023 book. He said, “When readers said they loved everything in an issue, I’d be pleased, but secretly felt that I’d failed. If their experience of what they read was more mixed—they liked these poems or those poems but not the rest—I’d feel that I’d lived up to my responsibilities because if one reader was partial to one poem, a different reader would probably favour another.” And for Barton, that means a more diverse collection could prompt a more diverse readership. Both Thammavongsa and Barton encourage pushing readers out of familiar comfortable patterns—and that is a good thing.
Barton’s extended introduction also, like Thammavongsa’s, pays attention to the value of small magazines, whether in paper or online, and Barton is emphatic about the role of online journals as they tend to “flourish outside the thrall of the official funding environment and therefore do not have to engage in the culture of appeasement that earning the support of granting agencies would have forced upon them.” Those agencies, says Barton, use funding models that are “burn-out inducing and sometimes soul-destroying.” As a long-time editor at literary journals, Barton surely has inside knowledge of the struggle to secure funding.
Of the fifty poems included in the 2023 collection, several will stick in my head for a variety of reasons. Randy Lundy’s “A Note on the Use of the Term Genocide” questions the loss of life in the Holocaust with that in the Americas after European contact/invasion (six million to sixty million) and even whether or not what he has written is a poem or if he has the right to write: “Perhaps you have no right even / to write a poem in the long shadow of that / time” given the different histories. Lundy connects his personal history with the larger public histories, and tragically the losses continue. Comparing genocides is unsettling, of course.
Nedda Sarshar’s “Why did we bury the ashes?” also unsettles in its examination of an Iranian grandfather’s desire to go home from Toronto. He is aging, developing dementia, and regretting moving to Canada. Sarshar builds the poem by a series of “because” statements, answering the question posed in the title, for example, “Because no one else in the neighbourhood could make their tomatoes grow. / He said it was because they did not know to love their dirt.” The importance of gardening is found also in Jeremy Loveday’s “On Homecoming,” a celebration of creating beauty, even though it may not last and even though the gardener, a ninety-year-old woman, may not see the results: “Today, my neighbor is planting daylilies / Which will work a whole year to ready / Each flower to open only for a single day. / The fullest expression of hope. The work of joy.” Creating pleasure matters.
Helen Han Wei Luo’s “Consider the Peony” also looks at cultivating growth, but in a child—and negatively. The speaker is thought of a less than as she is a girl. Her culture prefers boys, and she grows up in a troubled and poor immigrant family in Vancouver, but her use of language is densely rich: “It is for the lack of piety that / the peony pushes silken gold to the bees. Their pilfering / seeds thyme and marjoram, and peonies no longer. This is / what lack of piety does—pollinate.” Loss of a child is detailed in Lise Gaston’s “James” (won the CBC poetry prize in 2012) as a mother has a stillbirth. Loss of self is detailed in Triny Finlay’s “Adjusting the Psychotropics” which makes use of anaphora to show what happens with medication. Finlay repeats “When we changed my meds” and the results on the speaker and those around her.
And because the collection has poems written during the pandemic, that experience makes its way into poems, notably “The Last Thing I’ll Remember” by Michael Dunwoody, another look at loss. This time it’s a man who cannot attend to his hospitalized husband who has Covid. They have survived homophobia from family members and been married as soon as it was legally possible, but cannot be together and all the speaker can do is wave from the parking lot and beg to be let in. Dunwoody’s details of what happens to the patient are wrenching s the doctor says, “‘We’ll take care of him,’ never hinting / at the rising temperature; the rasping cough; / the struggle for breath; / the chest compressions; / the decision to intubate given his age.” And the losses continue.
As always, the volume contains commentaries for the poets, a list of magazines consulted, and a list of notable poems not included. Barton, like the editors before him, has done a wonderful job of combing through magazines to give readers a book packed with poems worth reading and rereading, whether you like them or not. Job well done! And now to wait for the 2024 volume.
Nila: The Bleeding Garden
by Laila Re,
Mawenzi House,
148 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-774150-85-6
In the Preface to her debut novel, Laila Re reveals the pain she felt while writing the story of a young Afghan girl whose family leaves their home in Kabul to try to find a better life: “I lost count of how many times I cried while writing this book. It was a therapeutic and cathartic experience—this is what brought me into creative writing in the first place: healing through the arts.” And in the following Introduction, Re morphs into Nila, the adult who recounts the family’s flight and the many struggles they face.
The novel is organized by place and is set in four places. The first stop is Baghlan, Afghanistan, where the family moves in the spring of 1995 when Nila is five; the second move is to Islamabad, Pakistan, in the summer of 1995; the third move is to Toronto in winter, 1995. Then a short chapter set in York captures 1996-1998. Like her character, Re was born in Kabul and emigrated to Canada as a small child.
One of the challenges of having a first-person narrator is the risk of inconsistency, which Rd does not overcome. Nila’s experiences as a child are delivered mainly in the voice of the child, a child who simply does not (and cannot) understand all the chaos around her. But the novel is written by the adult Nila, and the perspectives of child and adult don’t quite mesh. For a first novel, such a structure is tricky, and then added to the complexity is the personal aspect. How much of the story is memoir and how much is fiction is hard to tell although at times it’s evident that Re uses the painful experiences of her family and those of other immigrants. As she says in the Preface, “The characters represent real experiences of Afghans, including my own, which I witnessed, or heard or read about from the wars in Afghanistan.” Perhaps a better choice would have been non-fiction, and in that way, Re could make her points about the traumas experienced and vary the point of view more effectively from that of a small child.
However, what the novel does excel at is showing the enormous difficulty for anyone emigrating, especially to a significantly different culture. Nila is constantly wondering what is going on and why the family is struggling so much. All she wants to do is go to school and to have a doll. Her two older siblings have their own problems. Abdullah, who is ten, and Ruby, who is seven, have both missed much school and suffer because of that when they finally get to Canada. Plus Abdullah appears to have some illness (he has a seizure at one point) that is never explained. Ruby has a learning disability. Nila dislikes her older siblings, in part because their anger about their situation makes them aggressive. The baby of the family, Laila, is born in Pakistan. In many ways, the most intriguing character is the mother, a woman, who comes from a wealthy family, who is educated, who had been a journalist, and who marries for love. And then civil war tears up her life. As Nila notes how pale her mother is when she comes home from the hospital with the baby, “She had just escaped a civil war, survived a car accident, and was still in recovery from it all—while being pregnant. It must have been the hardest nine months of her life.” Unfortunately, life continues to throw sorrows at her. I really wanted to know her thoughts.
Getting to Canada doesn’t solve all the family’s problems. It gets them out of a war zone, but in a way puts them into another kind of war zone, a financial battle and a fracturing of family. Re does a good job of showing that all the issues families deal with still exist within immigrant families, and everything is so much harder. Nila’s father is a businessman in Afghanistan, but cannot find a comparable job in Toronto. It’s a devastating blow to his sense of himself and his desire to take care of his family. Racism is an issue. Language is a problem although curiously Nila says little about her own difficulties in that regard, apart from commenting how the children spend their time left alone in the apartment in Toronto: “Since father was not supervising us, we ended up watching whatever we wanted. . . . My English naturally improved.”
When parents emigrate, it’s generally to provide a better life for their children, one free of violence and poverty. But getting to another country such as Canada is only the beginning of immense challenges. Nila: The Bleeding Garden does a compelling job of exposing the challenges and the emotional toll those challenges have on immigrants. And it offers glimpses into Afghan culture to help readers understand the characters and their struggles.
Shimmer
by Alex Pugsley,
Biblioasis,
190 pages, $22.95,
ISBN: 978-1-77196-469-2
Alex Pugsley is a master of fiction. His debut novel, Aubrey McKee (2020), is terrific, and he has followed up that win with a splendid collection of short fiction titled Shimmer. The stories are wide-ranging in their characters while maintaining a wry tragi-comic view of life.
Some of the stories are connected by character. The first and last stories feature mostly fifteen-year-olds seemingly on the brink of drinking themselves to death while looking for some kind of meaning. The opening story, “Deedee at the 7-Eleven,” sets the tone of most of the stories right from the first line: “’So what the fuck have you been doing, Veeper?’” asks Wendell who’s been waiting for his friend to bring the beer. The two discuss going to a party and then run into two girls and get into an argument about Wendell’s ex-girlfriend Deedee, who is throwing the party. The narrator, Veeper, delivers the conversation with a breath-taking authenticity and a clear look at teen angst.
The final story, “Shimmer,” is set at the party discussed in the first, but this time the narrator is third person and focusses on the girls, in particular Celeste, who is beyond unhappy and is contemplating suicide. The fact that it’s all teen drama ramped up to the sky does not make anything less real. Anyone who ever went to a party when the host’s parents were out of town will recognize the chaos, both physical and emotional.
As far as form, Pugsley appears able to do it all. “Ordinary Love Song” is told in emails. It’s set in 2003. Now it would be text, I suppose, but the email form works well to showcase the absolute need of two characters, Byron and Jessica, who take their time getting together via email, and then tell the story of the relationship as it plays out. These characters are in their twenties, but have many of the problems of the teens. Sex and alcohol play a huge role. Pugsley captures particular groups well, whether it’s angsty drunk teens or angsty drunk twenty-something-year-olds. Jessica went to Trent and describes the students: “Basically there’s sort of this archetype for people from Trent—the indie-rock dude at the back of the party in the plaid shirt drinking PBR who sees the truth in all the blood and spit and despair as he bumblefucks his way through a philosophy degree . . . ”[.] I have no idea if that’s true, but it’s fun to read. And what matters is that it’s Jessica’s reality.
And that’s part of Pugley’s genius. He takes characters, not quite likeable, gives them quite a mouth, and then even when they are being vile, manages to make them funny and ultimately human. In “Twyla,” for example, the title character visits her psychotherapist because she wants a change in her life. As she says, “It’s just my texting personality and my real-life personality are getting farther and farther apart.” She has no idea what she wants apart from not wanting what she has. Her boyfriend Justin wants to have a baby, but while they are at a resort all she wants to do is have sex. She complains and says, “[H]e started behaving like a little fuck-boat and the worst dick-biscuit possible. I mean, we’re at this beautiful resort for the weekend and all he wants to do is talk about the relationship?” Twyla rants about everything. She wants the therapist to teach her how to live. I wonder how that turns out.
These stories are moving even when the characters are self-absorbed and annoying because Pugsley somehow manages to infuse them with recognizable needs even when they are being beastly or just plain stupid. Many are caught up in the surface of life, such as brand names, appearance, clothing, and competition for position and status. But the struggles are real, whether it’s a teenager or a successful model or a slightly ageing actor who is trying to find a path in life.
The story that is the outlier is “Legion,” and because it’s different from the others, it sticks in my head. The narrator is drinking in the Legion and thinking about his step-brother, John-Angus, who died in a Glace Bay mine. It’s the shortest story in the book, and it packs a serious wallop.
But really, all of these stories are lodged in my head, and they throw off such sparks that Pugsley has dozens of narrative trails to follow. Some characters reappear and spur curiosity about how they got to where they are and where they are going. And if you are like me and enjoyed these stories as much as I did, you will immediately turn to the beginning of the book and read them all again.
Temerity & Gall
by John Metcalf,
Biblioasis,
446 pages, $32.95
ISBN: 978-1-77196-449-4
The title of John Metcalf’s latest book, Temerity & Gall, comes from a letter that W.P. Kinsella wrote to the Globe and Mail in 1983 complaining about Metcalf’s comments on Canadian literature because Metcalf was an immigrant. That’s a dumb comment, but neither man is known for holding back opinions, so it’s not surprising that they clashed. Almost thirty years later, Bibiloasis has decided to publish this work by its senior fiction editor, and it’s doubtful that anyone else would have been given such a platform.
Metcalf is a respected writer garnering praise from luminaries, such as Alice Munro, who is quoted on the cover as having said that Metcalf “has written some of the very best stories ever published in this country.” Several writers, such as Caroline Adderson, have found Metcalf to be a gifted and generous editor. But if Metcalf thinks work falls short of his exacting and opaque standards, he can be vicious. It was weirdly amusing to read his attacks on various writers, and as I turned that pages, I wondered what fresh hell he was about to unleash.
The major attack is on the Canada Council, for which Metcalf’s vitriol has no bounds. He objects to the categories established to award grants, categories presumably developed to mitigate sexism and other inequities. Metcalf wants grants to go to the best writers with no consideration of who those writers are in terms of gender, ethnicity, or anything else. He says, “The minute we accept public money the rules change; we are no longer operating under the essentially elitist rules of art but under the egalitarian rules of a largely compassionate democracy.” There’s so much to tear apart in that statement. Enjoy yourself.
But Metcalf goes on: “Any system of state support to the arts is doomed to record mediocrity.” I’m sure he excludes this volume or Biblioasis in general as the press notes on the copyright page that it receives grants from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. I started to wonder what Metcalf has on Dan Wells, Biblioasis’ editor, to get him to publish what is essentially a vanity screed. Metcalf has allowed Wells to insert footnotes in a kind of on-going discussion regarding grants, and Wells tries valiantly to defend the Canada Council while not annoying Metcalf, an impossible task as Metcalf appears impervious to contrary opinions. That’s not a problem. People can have fixed views. But his crankiness and tendency to show off his erudition are off-putting. And as Wells points out, “Cannot the purpose of the arts councils (and art is always pluralized in such references), as is the case with publishers and other artistic organizations, be multiple? To award literary excellence, yes, but also to encourage artistic practice at different levels? To document and record and remember? Without such investments . . . culture and artistic practice becomes an exclusively (economically) elite preoccupation.” These questions raise important points. Metcalf counters with the point that the Canada Council has to provide the funds because the public doesn’t. I’d argue that the Canada Council is the way the public provides funds, whether or not everyone in the public is interested in books. Gone are the days of private patrons or personal wealth being the only sources of support for those in the arts. Like Wells, I see value in the Canada Council, even if there are problems with categories or how decisions are made.
This book has an incoherent structure. It’s divided into four sections of wildly varying length that are roughly arranged around readings done to celebrate Biblioasis’ republication of some of the work of the Montreal Story Tellers. Forty years have passed and the group which includes Metcalf, Ray Smith, and Clark Blaise is set to do readings in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa. Metcalf describes the get-together of the old friends while making several sideways excursions into what he seems to be thinking about at the time regarding books. One particular section is one his love of book collecting, and let’s just say he is in an entirely different category from most people who may love books (and reading) but who would never spend thousands of dollars on one book even if they could afford it. But Metcalf really loves his books and he is quite sad or angry that no library in Canada wants to buy the collection. So he will have to break it up to sell it. I’m having difficulty summoning the required feeling about this problem.
Overall, like several people with whom Metcalf has disagreed, I kept waiting to find out how he establishes that a writer is worthwhile, that a book is great. It seems to come down to you know it when you read it. And I have some sympathy for that view as there’s a magic in art that does make it hard or impossible to define. So is this book great? Or even good? Maybe. I do know it’s too long, unfocussed, and self-indulgent. But it does have many thoughtful and excellent points, such as the need to educate people to appreciate art. In a long section of 58 pages, Metcalf includes eight examples of fiction (pretending they are typescripts sent to him for consideration) and comments on what makes them special. He has keen eye, and the section reminds me of George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, with its sensitivity to how the mind moves through a piece of fiction and how well Chekhov directs the minds of his readers. None of the eight writers included in this section is Canadian, and two are women. All are white.
Metcalf Is not shy when it comes to his own capabilities, and they are considerable. But so is his ability to be dismissive and rude. It’s a style often found in the literary world, especially the British one. (Metcalf came to Canada from England after graduating from the University of Bristol.) Now in his eighties, Metcalf appears to be settling scores or possibly tilting at the same droopy windmills. But I have to admire his absolute dedication to the world of fiction. He really has dedicated his life to seeking excellence (however that is determined) and promoting it.
Her First Palestinian and Other Stories
by Saeed Teebi,
Anansi Press,
246 pages, $22.99
ISBN: 978-1-4870-1087-4
This debut collection is one of those that when I finished reading it, I immediately started to calculate when I would have the time to read it again. These nine stories are deliriously good. The title story was shortlisted for the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize, and Saeed Teebi, a lawyer in Toronto, clearly has an abundance of talent. His surface directness and simplicity belie a richness of emotion and complexity of issues, at the centre of which is the displacement of Palestinians.
Teebi was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. The family moved to Canada in 1993, and the stories have a solid aura of authenticity regarding the struggles of Palestinians, especially those who leave the Middle East for Canada and find themselves better off in many ways but whose sense of loss is pervasive. Most of the main characters are educated, upper-middle-class people who were able to leave their residences in various countries, but the concept of home, when Palestine is caught in what seems to be a never-ending political struggle, not to mention violence, is fraught with anxiety. Should an immigrant simply move on? “Her First Palestinian” plays with this concept as the narrator, a Palestinian-Canadian doctor has a non-Arab girlfriend, a lawyer who becomes absorbed by the political issues and a particular case in the West Bank. The tension is played out in their sex life as Nadia uses physical force against Abed apparently as criticism of his lack of action regarding the struggles of Palestinians. But it’s not that Abed has no interest. He just wants to live: “In her presence, it became difficult to live normally, or to talk about anything else.” Of course, the question raised is what is normal—and from whose perspective?
The stories also show how cultural differences can be challenging to negotiate. In “Do Not Write about the King,” Murad, a math professor in Toronto, makes an offhand comment in an article about the king of an unnamed kingdom in the Middle East. His father insists that he should delete the comment, arguing that the power of the kingdom is far-reaching. Who is right—the man who believes in a kind of freedom in Canada that the family did not have in the kingdom (as they were only guests, allowed to stay because of the father’s skill at his work) or the father who believes that the kingdom can exact revenge not only on Murad but on any family member?
Cultural differences also play a huge role in “The Body,” in which a student named Sam (Sameer) is sent to Thunder Bay to carry out a dubious task for his law firm. Sam is basically blackmailed into the possibly illegal action to maintain employment and is perhaps selected for the job because it’s thought that he is desperate enough to do what is required. And maybe even that his Arab background means he will skirt the law. Plus as he’s not a fully-fledged lawyer yet, it appears that his firm is willing to throw him under a very large bus. He’s supposed to get a body released from the morgue and sent to the Middle East so the family of the dead young man can save face. So it’s a clash between Canadian law and connections. How can Sam carry out the assignment when he has been threatened with prosecution if he bothers the coroner’s office again?
The quest for home and identity is a constant thread through these stories, as is a focus on making the reader see other sides of issues. Maybe the most heart-breaking story is the final one, “Enjoy Your Life, Capo,” in which, Salah, a computer programmer is desperate to create an app to make money. This app measures breathing, and as Salah’s teenage daughter Firdaos has cystic fibrosis, the app would have huge medical benefit. He imagines headlines: “Perhaps a lede with one of the many patients I helped survive. And—dare I dream?—even a word or two from the original inspiration for it all , my tenacious fighter, Firdaos. This is the world I want to belong to. But it is not the world I am in.” This story is partially set during the pandemic and the protests about racism. Firdaos is deeply involved in online posting about issues, including the mess of the Middle East and gets into trouble at school. Meanwhile Salah’s app has found a buyer, but it’s complicated. A good invention can be used for other means, so what is Salah to do?
Saeed Teebi has a firm grasp of so many issues it’s impossible to list them all. Plus he shows the utter complexity of a world in which fairness and equity don’t exist. I’m sure I will be reading these stories again.
Sisu’s Winter War
by Liisa Kovala,
Latitude 46 Publishing,
342 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 9781988989471
Liisa Kovala’s debut novel is a complex consideration of history, identity, and memory. The novel moves back and forth through time and place, beginning in 1933 in Finland and ending in 1980 in Northern Ontario. Kovala, who is Finnish Canadian and resident in Sudbury, has clearly used personal interest and experience to fashion this novel.
Starting with birth and death, Sisu’s Winter War, immediately demonstrates its seriousness. Thirteen-year-old Meri Saari is terrified as her mother is in labour. Her father Armas is away, and while Meri wants to help Akka, the local midwife, and take care of her ten-year-old sister, Eveliina, her fear nearly paralyzes her as her mother has lost babies before. This time the child, a daughter to be called Nadia, survives, but the mother does not. With her dying breath, Yekaterina makes Meri promise to keep the family together.
Family is critical to this novel, and family has already been broken before Yekaterina’s death. The mother is Russian, and her marriage to Armas, who is Finnish, has estranged her from her family. Armas brings up his three daughters with Meri catapulted into responsibility and acting as mother to her little sisters. When Russia invades Finland in 1939, setting off the First Soviet-Finnish War, also known as the Winter War, the family again suffers loss as Armas goes to defend his country and contact with his daughters ceases. Reading about a Russian invasion was particularly difficult, given current events. Kovala does a good job of showing the complications of neighbours at war as the Saari girls are both Russian and Finnish.
“Sisu” is the nickname given to Meri by her best friend Markus. It means a special kind of strength, which Meri certainly has even though she constantly questions herself. Kovala spins out the narrative by exploring Meri’s life. In 1980, Meri is living in Canada, is widowed, and has raised her grand-daughter Katia, whose mother Linnea has her at a young age. The novel is an intricate dance through the years, and influencing everything in the present timeframe (1980) is Meri’s increasing dementia, her personal winter.
The greatest structural challenge of the novel is that Meri is the narrator and that Kovala has decided to make her knowledge of English weak even though she has lived in Canada for decades. So the novel is in English (with many Finnish words included), and Meri is totally articulate as narrator, except when she is speaking in the 1980 Canada parts. Plus, of course, her mental decline means that she is losing words. Readers have to switch between sentences of varying levels of English, and that can be a bit destabilising—what Meri herself is experiencing as she struggles with memory and her sense of herself and a secret she has kept for ages. The past and present are mingling for Meri: “The little girl dancing, the illusive figure in the woods, my mother in the kitchen. They weren’t dreams; they appeared before me. The first harbingers. Remember us, they seemed to say. I feared one by one my memories would disappear.”
This novel is full of pain and loss, but it also reveals the best efforts of human beings and their ability to love even when everything around them is falling apart or being blown up. I suspect people of any culture will recognize the importance placed on family ties, and the glimpses into Finnish culture (saunas, for example) are fascinating. And learning a bit about history never hurts except to see that it just seems to repeat.
Hey, Good Luck Out There
by Georgia Toews,
Doubleday Canada, 330 pages, $27.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-69671-5
In her debut novel, Hey, Good Luck Out There, Georgia Toews channels the writing approach of her mother, Miriam, by mining her life for fiction. The narrator, a 22-year-old woman, enters rehab for alcoholism and describes her experience. Toews herself experienced rehab and like her character, she’s from Winnipeg and now lives in Toronto. Her grandfather and aunt committed suicide. It’s clear from the beginning that the character suffers from loneliness, among other problems, and perhaps what is the strongest element of the novel is its exploration of what may lead people to various addictions.
Toews’ narrator is, perhaps, lucky compared to many of the other women. She has a loving family. Her parents, while divorced and with other partners, care about their daughter. Her brother and grandmother (a Blue Jays fan like Lottie in Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows) love and support her. The stories of some of the other women are horrific, the worst being that of Steph, a 17-year-old addict who is homeless and has been raped by her father. But the narrator has also suffered sexual assault as have many of the other women.
The daily grind of the facility is beyond tedious. It’s hard to see how numerous group therapy sessions in which the women are supposed to talk about their lives would help. Plus there’s little to do apart from a few chores and talking. Several women are repeat participants. Perhaps the format signals the extreme difficulty of combatting addiction—everything else must be cleared away to make space for healing. Toews does an excellent job of showing how frustrated her narrator is by the whole thing, while also delving into her need to make connections with the other women, no matter how hard that is. The women form a constantly changing core group of friends, and all the while Toews is paying attention to what constitutes friendship. Often it simply means ganging up to bully another woman.
The pain of addiction is no doubt compounded by all the other challenges. Most of the women don’t know what to do with their lives. They are struggling to survive on all levels. Toews’ narrator studied creative writing but is wary of the power of words: “I didn’t like to write deep shit, stuff about my specific feelings, because I’d learned it could be used against you. If you take a slab of yourself and put it on the page, there’s no one guaranteeing your slab is protected.” The narrator has a pink journal, a gift from her grandmother, that she uses to vent, and ultimately the novel is her slab on the page. As most people don’t go to rehab, the book provides a thoughtful study of the process.
The book also provides glimpses into the contemporary world for older readers. One of the first shocking bits for me was the narrator’s revelation about the internet and anorexia: “I’d never been able to throw up soberly. I’d tried, I’d spent a terrifying few hours scrolling through pro-ana websites when I was fifteen.” Knowing what children can see on the internet is one thing, but having it presented in such a fashion is quite another. What a world. Violence is common, particularly violence against women, and Toews does a terrific job of showing how much appearance counts for both her narrator and other characters. Descriptions of crude tattoos and badly bitten fingernails are visual cues to the rampant despair.
Being in a 30-day program is only part of the picture. What happens when the narrator leaves is developed in the second part of the novel. She needs to find a place to live, a job, a purpose. Toronto is expensive. Again, she has help from her parents, but they are both coping with varying degrees of success in their new families. The narrator’s father is an alcoholic, and her mother has attempted suicide. For that matter, so has the narrator. So the question of what causes addiction appears tied to both nature (heredity) and nurture (environment). The nurture aspect seems to be more lack of positive nurture; trauma is clearly a possible instigator of addiction as people struggle to suppress pain. This struggle may be widespread: “I’m just so fucking sad,” I whispered. Every fucking millennial is.” It’s not just millennials.
This book gives insight into something that affects everyone in society. You don’t have to be an addict. The power of Toews’ novel lies in its humanizing of people who are often misunderstood or rejected. Hey, Good Luck Out There refuses to offer a pat ending or solutions. Instead it raises valuable questions.
Dreaming Home
by Lucian Childs,
Biblioasis,
224 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-77196-549-1
Toronto writer Lucian Childs’ debut novel could be read as a cautionary tale of what happens when a family is subjugated to the homophobic views of the father, a deeply religious Vietnam vet who fails to see the potential destruction of his decisions. Told in six chapters from different points of view and moving through time, the novel revolves around Kyle, who in 1977 is fifteen years old.
The opening chapter, “Rachel,” is a first-person account by Kyle’s twelve-year-old sister, Rachel. Childs employs the slang of the times for Rachel’s narrative. She has been indoctrinated by her father and his religion, and when she discovers that Kyle is gay, she thinks he is going to hell. And she tells her father because the Bible says she’s her “brother’s keeper.” As expected, the father goes berserk and beats his son. That’s bad enough, but then he decides to pack him off to one of those appalling pray-the-gay-away joints, and the suffering simply intensifies. Diane, Kyle’s mother, appears unable to help her son and disappears into a bottle. Rachel has to cope with her own guilt for her misguided actions, while missing her brother and trying to deal with the fact that her mother blames her for Kyle’s absence, calling her a “treacherous child.” She has forgotten that Rachel is a child and is behaving according to what she is taught. This is not a viable family.
Kyle is a sensitive boy and a good artist. His goal is to become an architect and he draws his dream home. Childs is clearly exploring the idea of what makes a home, especially when the potential inhabitants have been ravaged by contempt. Kyle and Rachel are both nearly broken by what happens when they are young. The novel jumps forward in increments of time to disclose what happens to the family members and the people close to them.
The second chapter, “The Boys at the Ministry,” gives a devastating look at the institution where Kyle is sent. The chapter is narrated by the incarcerated boys and describes what happens, especially to Kyle. None of it is good. The boys are attacked, verbally and physically, while being made to memorize chunks of scripture. It’s a nightmare. Childs does an excellent job of showing the idiocy of such treatment and the various effects on the boys. They turn on each other in most cases, simply to preserve themselves: “For scripture counsels us that if another believer sins, we must rebuke them.” This religion is, as Diane says, “filled with hate.” If only she had done something to understand and protect her children, but she too can be seen as a victim. It’s hard to feel sympathy for her though, as Kyle and Rachel have no power at all.
From his initial home in Texas, Kyle makes it to San Francisco, the gay magnet. The novel details his attempts to become an architect, even though he lacks the academic training required. His struggles to support himself are heart-breaking as he is not afraid of work. Once in San Francisco, he makes friends and has lovers. But there’s an enormous hole in him. Kyle is a fascinating character, but he is always at a remove, both from the other characters and the reader. He does reconnect with his mother, but Diane is such an unlikable and selfish character, that it’s hard to believe he loves her except that he has a lingering childhood need for someone to take care of him. She bulldozes her way into his life, and while I think we are supposed to feel sorry for her and admire her ability to survive, I just can’t.
The person I do have a lot of sympathy for is Rachel. It’s an utter tragedy that a mistake a twelve-year-old girl makes has such a grave effect on her life. And the men Kyle gets involved with also suffer as they cannot help Kyle or manage his depression. The one friend Kyle does maintain is Rebecca, a lesbian in a relationship with two other women. She does help Kyle, and their bond is strong, if somewhat transactional.
The technique of slicing into life at intervals can work well in a novel, but the added complication of various narrators often means that readers simply have to guess or ignore what is going on with other characters, especially Kyle. What we get is his effect on others. And given his early trauma, he seems unable to fully communicate or connect with others. It could be argued that everyone is damaged in some way, but to be harmed because of homosexuality is avoidable. Or in the case of Rachel, to be ostracized for doing what you’ve been told is what you should do—and you are a child—is unforgivable. What’s quite scary is that the type of religion Childs describes in this novel has nothing to do with love or forgiveness. And it’s a version of religion that appears to be gaining ground in some parts of the US. Maybe if people understood the deleterious effects of their homophobia, they would change their behaviour. I can hope, can’t I?
Isolated Incident
by Mariam Pirbhai,
Mawenzi House,
214 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 978-10774150-88-7
Mariam Pirbhai is a university professor and child of immigrants, and no doubt these experiences have given her great insight into the lives of the characters in her debut novel, Isolated Incident, which focusses on three young people trying to find their place in the world. Set in Toronto, with its huge population of immigrants, the novel sensitively explores the challenges faced by immigrants and their children as they are caught between cultures.
Born and raised in Toronto, specifically North York, Kashif Siddiqui ponders his future. His mother has cancer, and his father has departed the family home to live with another women. Kashif finds some solace in his volunteer work at the Islamic Cultural Centre, and he attempts to learn more about Islam, the religion neither of his parents are particularly committed to. The novel opens with a shocking event: the Centre is attacked. No one is hurt, and the incident is seen as “isolated” by police. But as Pirbhai shows, violence, whether verbal or physical, is an ever-present threat in varying degrees. Kashif is sweet young man who helps support his mother and who misses his father. He works at a gas station, but certainly doesn’t want that to be permanent. One day when he is waiting for his mother at her cancer treatment, he meets Frank, a police officer on leave, who is also suffering from cancer, and Kashif wonders if he could join the force.
All the characters are connected in various ways. Kashif likes a young woman named Aruba, another volunteer at the Centre. Aruba goes to university and is friends with Marisol. The two women take a women and gender studies class, and Pirbhai uses the class to good effect to introduce the question of how Muslim are treated. The professor lectures on an a horrible real-life case: a man has killed his two daughters, and the murder is branded an “honour killing.” Marisol asks, “I was wondering why honour killings are described as a religious practice, and not as a social or cultural phenomenon? And besides, whose Islam are we talking about—I mean does this family’s background make a difference?” Aruba wonders why the media “referred to the man as Muslim, and referred to his daughters as Canadian. Weren’t they all Canadians?” And she wonders why the other victim, an older woman, is largely left out of the professor’s lecture. The novel shines a light on different kinds of identity, both how people see themselves and how they are seen by others.
The friendship between Aruba and Marisol is complicated by the fact that Aruba is quite religious. She wears a hijab and suffers the indignity of being called out by some awful teenager son the bus. And then one pulls off her hijab. Marisol is gay, and Aruba has difficulty integrating that fact into her concept of Islam. Like any religion, Islam has adherents in diverse ways. The problem is that Muslims all seem to be lumped together, especially when something negative happens. The novel deals with this fact beautifully while also educating readers about some aspects of Islam in a deeply sensitive manner.
The older adults have their own problems. Frank is divorced and estranged from his son. He has the corny and somewhat annoying habit of mispronouncing names and turning phrases into acronyms, but he is basically a good guy. In fact, most of the characters are simply ordinary people trying to live their lives. Aruba’s father is dead, and her mother has gone back to Pakistan because of her father’s ill health. Marisol’s parents, a Lebanese-Canadian professor and a Guatemalan-Canadian lawyer live in Montreal, support heir daughter, and welcome her friends into their home. The religious leaders of the Muslim community struggle to know how to react to the attack on the Centre. It’s all so believable.
Isolated Incident both entertains and instructs. Novels which reveal the lives of immigrants should be read. One of the best lines comes from Kashif who thinks, “Couldn’t [the community elders] see they wore a distorted target on their backs, making them ripe for suspicion and attack? Did they have to accept prejudice as the price to pay for living here, like an undisclosed immigration fee?” And added to the issues raised by Pirbhai, the novel also touches on First Nations land claims because immigration has gone on for centuries and caused all kinds of problems while giving many people opportunities for a better life. Pirbhai shows the complexity of all these concerns. And starting to deal with them requires some knowledge of what they are.
