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The Globe and Mail

16.09.11

), His punches here would have landed with greater force. Had he chosen a more conventional form of tragedy, like an earthquake or a flood, he could have concentrated on his real subject – bereavement – without leaving irritating questions in the reader’s mind. But he didn’t, and that’s a shame.

Even so, loss is certainly something he writes about well. His characters respond in ways that are believable, inventive and (unsurprisingly) quasi-religious. Tom Garvey leaves his college studies to follow a shady insta-prophet called Holy Wayne, while his teenage sister, Jill, engages in a regular Spin the Bottle game fuelled less by lust than by the need for ritual. Their mother, Laurie, has abandoned her family to join a cult called the Guilty Remnant, whose members dress in white, mortify themselves by smoking and harass those who seem to have moved on with their lives.

Then there are the best characters, incipient lovers who brighten the book each time they appear: Laurie’s husband Kevin, the town’s industrious mayor, and Nora, a young mother who’s lost her entire family. Nora’s beautifully affecting nightly routine is to watch her son’s favourite cartoon over and over, diarizing each instalment as a kind of sugar-coated memento mori. This book is often difficult to read, featuring as it does a multitude of people blunted by despair. But Nora’s grief journey is something to see; it’s funny, angry and insightful. In her darkest hour, she’s still first-rate company.

Source: Globe and Mail