The Transition looks at what we are willing to sacrifice
With the holidays now in the past, some of us are probably starting to feel a little overwhelmed. Money is tight and the credit card bills are coming due. Resolutions have lost their lustre (if they haven’t collapsed entirely). Moments of domestic contentment are fewer and farther between.
It’s time for a reset. The Transition might seem like a good option.
It does for Karl and Genevieve, the young English couple at the centre of Luke Kennard’s debut novel The Transition. They’re in the “enviable demographic once known as Double Income No Kids,” but they’re struggling to keep up in the new economy. Genevieve is a primary school teacher. Karl uses his master’s degree in the metaphysical poets to write online reviews of products he has never used and “bespoke school and undergraduate essays,” while spending most of his time managing a “seventeencard private Ponzi scheme,” a life on thin credit which will, inevitably, collapse.
When it does, and Karl is facing jail time for fraud and mammoth debt, their accountant recommends The Transition. They’ll give up their apartment and most of their previous lives and move in with a pair of mentors. They’ll live rent-free, putting most of their income toward their debt, while at the same time undergoing a series of educational and retraining programs to address, among other things, their relationships with money, debt and each other. After their six-month term, they’ll be placed in new lodgings and given new employment opportunities through The Transition. Their problems will be firmly behind them, a golden future ahead. Too good to be true?
Kennard, an award-winning poet, handles the material of The Transition with a wry humour and a gradually mounting horror, rooted in realistically depicted characters who find themselves suddenly immersed in a surreal world. Blending early-’70s-vintage success cults with early-oughts start-up culture (think EST meets Facebook), with a healthy dollop of conspiracy paranoia and Stepford-spouses, The Transition is a winning romp that somehow also manages to be a keenly insightful examination of how we live now and how much we are willing to sacrifice in the name of success and comfort. Robert Wiersema’s latest book is Black Feathers.