Many unhappy returns
Magic is afoot in Son of a Trickster, the long- awaited new novel from B.C. writer Eden Robinson.
This i s good news for readers, but the characters aren’t too happy about it.
As t he novel begins, 16- year- old Jared has bigger problems than magic. Although well- known ( perhaps a bit too well- known) for his marijuana baking skills, Jared has been largely pushed to the sidelines of high school life.
His mother has allowed her drug-dealer boyfriend to move into their house, along with a motley crew of boarders, so the mortgage can be paid during the economic downturn that has struck Kitimat. His father is a deadbeat Jared is financing with the proceeds from his baking.
Jared drinks too much himself, and smokes too much, and his only friend, a pit bull named Baby Killer (with an oddly endearing flatulence problem) has been euthanized for worms.
Then things seem to take a turn for the better. Jared finds himself suddenly included in the school’s social scene, and he gets a girlfriend. Have things changed for the youthful stoner?
Of course not. That’s when things get weird. Ravens start talking to him, and they’re not too polite. He starts hearing Baby Killer outside in the night. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
It doesn’t come as too much of a shock when the magical world begins to intrude on Jared’s life. His grandmother on his mother’s side has always pushed him away, referring to Jared as Wee’git, and cautioning his mother.
“Be careful,” his grandmother said. “You know what he did to me. That isn’t your son. It’s the damn Trickster. He’s wearing a human face, but he’s not human.”
Jared never really believed his grandmother, but when his life begins to fill with omens and witches, nightmares and talking animals, he begins to wonder if maybe there was some truth to what she was saying.
And that’s before he encounters the cannibalistic were-otters.
Son of a Trickster is a unique, genuinely surprising novel from one of Canada’s finest writers, a hardscrabble coming-of-age story with mythic fiction at its most powerfully subversive. It’s exactly as slippery as a trickster tale should be, changing direction and shape even as you convince yourself you know what’s going on, and what will likely happen next.
Robinson, the author of two previous novels ( Blood Sports and Monkey Beach, which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award) and a short story collection ( Trapl i nes, a New York Times Notable Book) was awarded the Writers’ Trust Engel/ Findley Award for a writer in mid-career last fall.
She has long incorporated mythic elements in her fiction, alongside an often brutal realism, but her seemingly wholehearted embrace of the magical with Son of A Trickster sets the novel apart even within her impressive canon. This is Robinson at her best.
Much of the success of the novel comes from the strength with which Robin- son roots the fantastic events in the real world. Or, to be perfectly clear: worlds.
It is tempting to say that one could strip away the magical elements and have an impressive, realistic novel in its own right: Jared’s story is realistic, and rooted in a world that bleeds verisimilitude ( including a backdrop of the closing of the Eurocan pulp and paper mill and the conflict over the Enbridge pipeline), but it is also firmly rooted in cultural ideas of magic and myth — of another world existing alongside our own, a world as real as economic devastation and parental neglect. Yes, Jared balks at the magical nature of the events around him, but it is his role in those events that he is primarily resisting, not their reality, per se. It’s a crucial perspective — two worlds, equally real — through which Robinson has created a powerful magic-realist work.
GENUINELY SURPRISING NOVEL FROM ONE OF CANADA’S FINEST WRITERS.
Son of A Trickster unfolds through lean prose, using dialogue to drive the action and to develop the characters. The voice of the novel reflects Jared’s keen understanding of the world, and his ongoing ( and developing) challenges within it:
“Ebony Stewart’s brandname perfection was completely out of place in his basement pad, but she sat on his couch and accepted a beer as if they had remained friends since grade school. They hadn’t. After she’d morphed into a hot chick and had started running with the cooler- than- you crowd, she’d pretended not to know him.”
As dark as it is, the novel is also, as one might expect from Robinson, frequently hilarious, prompting laughter not just against the darkness, but from it. It is also, ultimately, hopeful, although — as Jared would tell you — that might just be an illusion.
Robinson has said Son of a Trickster is the first book of a trilogy. Given what Jared goes through here, one almost feels bad for being excited to read the troubles that await him in two further books.
Almost.