Convulsively readable

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex By Gabrielle Williams Groundwood Books 240 pp; $14.95

What makes a book compulsively readable and what’s that supposed to mean, anyway? Tossed out time and again, the turn of phrase must be doing something right — gussied up in flashy font, it’s a favourite for bestsellers’ coveted cover real estate — though I’ve never found the line clicked enough to be convincing. It seems some kind of scholastic urgency is the idea here, but compulsive is two letters shy of convulsive and either way sounds violent enough as-is: compulsions are jerky and haphazard, quick and necessary, driven by something primitive and irresistible. I love books — and so do you, I imagine, chasing my digression here — but only responsibility or its decidedly less noble cousin, need, tend to drive my day-to-day compulsions (or convulsions, come to that).

But then there was The Guy, The Girl, The Artist, His Ex and, well, me: three steps off a streetcar on Yonge — almost — instead splayed hands-and-knees on its tracks, thumb and forefinger skinned top-to-bottom but wedged firmly between two early pages of Gabrielle Williams’s most recent book about the four-person cast called on above. Banged up but unbroken, a retrospective assessment settles things quickly: worth it, more or less, pointer finger pockmark pending.

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex is a compulsively readable book — though it doesn’t lean on any such line to be sold — and my compliments to Gabrielle Williams come with qualified caution for your next commute. Williams’s fourcharacter bill fills 240 pages plenty, each twenty-something title character honestly representing their typecast and rotating respectively by chapter. Interwoven narrative has been beaten halfdead and is prone to bust, but Williams’s brand never veers hackney in her little ditty of Guy, Rafi, Luke and Penny, wound and poured out patiently through The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex.

Guy (as in The Guy) is every bit brazen high school senior, making good on the stereotype with a house party while mom and dad steal their weekend away. That’s the only part of his story you’ve heard before, and says nothing of the lithe, endearing boyishness that forgives (The) Guy’s convenient christening and lends his character immediate charm. Given a little plot twist and at least one life to save, Guy brings us right along to Girl (The Girl) who is, thankfully, not named Girl but Rafi.

The Bolivian transplant arrives in Melbourne alongside her single mom — not much a mother at all — Rafi relying mostly on several sweet uncles for all manner of support. They’re our link to Luke, The Artist, who goes also by The Bastard, if you were to ask His Ex, Penny. Penny was Luke’s muse du jour until she was his baby mama pour jamais, an accidental pregnancy splitting the pair before page 1. Luke is a talented Artist, also a Bastard, and midway through the book decides to become a Thief, Forger and Felon as well.

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex has one last major player, but the good news is he doesn’t need much introduction: enter Pablo Picasso, whose tie-in is based on the true story of a 1986 heist that briefly lost the National Gallery of Victoria its most iconic painting, plundering credit to a local group calling themselves Australian Cultural Terrorists.

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex is a very good book. It is also young adult. A decade ago, I’d have called that disclosure, but these days the admission is an endorsement in itself: balanced in structure and breathless in telling, good pacing for young adult makes reading a downright pleasure for the leisurely adult. Williams’s third book hits a sweet spot that’s been bestselling YA author John Green’s biggest boon to an increasingly bipartisan adult book market: breaking through with an all-ages bestseller and several movies since, Green has effectively dispelled whatever lingering self-consciousness a too-cool-for-this-big-kid might’ve caught from Stephenie Meyer and doubles down on the genre’s potential sales prospects, too. Good news for Gabrielle Williams, who may well be Green’s best dupe Down Under.

Cleverly crafted in circumstance or temperament, each title character from The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex carries a unique brand of maturity that’ll land for most adult readers. Williams did her research to nail fact-y bits, but firsthand experience shows in the novel’s nuance: Australianisms abound, my slang and search history benefiting significantly from their common use; in heavier moments, Williams writes of adolescence (and all its emotional et cetera) affectingly. The oscillating narrative shifts character perspective, but in those respective stories requires deft movement between worlds as well — from Sex Pistols to Surrealism, Williams manages to paint a knowing picture of pop culture’s influence in modern sprawl.

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex begs for cliché but rings out with absolute ingenuity instead: characters so easily stilted aren’t ever, and their core stories, woven expertly, are each a brilliant stroke built just right for the breezy read. Maybe a couple of cheap metaphors if I’ve got to say something to cool the acclaim, a little convenient cinching near the end, but otherwise a near-perfect sketch of a near-perfect story, well done even when it isn’t a story at all — Williams mincing the narrative with local letters to the editor, diversions just as they should be in a book this size: offering relief without wandering far, and their own comic breaks within.

The Guy, The Girl, The Artist and His Ex is a compulsively readable book, rendering at least one of my thumbs temporarily immobile; if it weren’t, that sucker would be pointed straight up with its sister.