Stacey Fortune, a.k.a Crow, is the narrator of this debut novel, set almost entirely in the Bras d’Or area of Cape Breton Island, where the author lives, in the late 1980s.
The opening sentence caught my attention: “I come from a long line of lunatics and criminals. Crazies on one side side of the family tree, crooks on the other, although the odd crazy has a touch of crook, and visa versa.”
She returns to her mother’s trailer in Cape Breton from a menial advertising job in Toronto in her late forties, to die, after being diagnosed with three Grade II inoperable brain tumours. She names this trio Parry Homunulus, Ziggy Stardust, and Fuzzy Wuzzy. Together they produce hallucinatory colourful auras over everyone she encounters.
Although there several are very interesting reflections on the process of dying, there are more, almost endless, unpredictable revelations about her extremely dysfunctional family. The language is extremely foul with abundant graphically-described sex but somehow one expects this from the poorly educated, drunken and drug-abusing characters. There are more surprise revelations about paternity than I could easily keep track of.
The writing is quirky with unpredictable twists: “In the corner of the common room, Char is belting out an off-key version of ‘Hotel California to a six-foot tall ficus plant. She thinks it is talking back to her, which is certainly further proof of madness. Any plant in its right rhizome can tell that she is as deaf as a telephone pole.”
«There is only one reason Peggy calls Mamma. Probably only one reason Peggy ever calls anyone. She must have dirt. Peggy isn’t smart enough to be a true criminal and she’s too lazy to be a proper lunatic. To compensate for those failures, she puts all her energy into being a pogey-scammer and a nasty, big-mouth gossip.”
I picked this book up from our lending library, on a whim without a recommendation. It certainly could be criticized as unfairly portraying Cape Bretoners, and there is no doubt a lot of exaggeration, but I quite enjoyed it.
8/10
The Passionate Reader 