This Alberta novelist describes a wide variety of very realistic characters with all their flaws, in 49 titled chapters, and straightforward third person narrative. The story covers about 10 months in about 2000 in the aftermath of a Saskatoon collision of two cars carrying passengers who have absolutely nothing in common. She largely relies on character development rather than sudden plot twists to keep readers engaged, and certainly succeeds. She even manages to get into the heads of three small children and see the world through their eyes.
The central character, a long-divorced introspective female insurance broker questions the meaning of her unfulfilled life following the accident that she caused and vows to become a positive force in the world. But her good deeds are under-appreciated and at times she feels used rather than useful. Existential questions about what it means to be good resonate in the musings of a variety of colourful characters, surrounded by the evil unappreciative players they try to help. There are no definitive answers provided to the enigmatic questions raised about what it means to be good, to do the right thing, and no definitive outcomes for any of the characters.
At times I found it a bit difficult to keep track of some of the peripheral characters, but on the whole, this was not a major problem. The description of the complexity of hospital life and the life-threatening cancer treatment one lady undergoes is spot on, even to the point of documenting an allergy transmitted to the recipient of a transplant, something I have observed in three patients, but is not a widely known phenomenon.
One of many great quotes, this one from the musings of a poetry-spouting, doubting, childless Anglican priest in a marriage that is about to dissolve: “The proximity of death makes us remember our own insignificance, that no one will remember us, that we are animate atoms, at most; our lives don’t matter. But the children do. If there are any children. A chicken: an egg’s way of making more eggs.”
This is one of the best novels I have read in a long time-and it is distinctly Canadian. I highly recommend it, but can’t recall who recommended it to me.
The Passionate Reader 