Ottawa Citizen

Often you can sneak a serious topic into a reader’s mind by presenting it in a beautiful place.

- Akin Emma Donoghue HarperColl­ins NANCY SCHIEFER

Author Emma Donoghue, on her new novel Akin

London, Ont., writer Emma Donoghue’s storytelli­ng skills are in fine form in her new, quick-paced novel, Akin. Donoghue fans won’t be disappoint­ed as the author of 2010’s bestsellin­g chronicle, Room, pens another page-turner.

In Akin, kinship itself, in all its intriguing possibilit­ies, is viewed through the forced pairing of a 79-year-old widower and his 11-yearold great-nephew and through the fraught events of a weeklong trip to the south of France.

When the book opens, in New York City, a frantic social worker is checking “kinship resources” for adolescent Michael Young, a boy bereft of any committed caregiver. The child’s father, a handsome wastrel whose irresponsi­ble behaviour has sparked family friction, is dead of a drug overdose. Michael’s mother has almost three years yet to serve on a drug traffickin­g offence. As a result, Michael had been living with his maternal grandmothe­r, who has just died.

The novel’s central character is Noah Selvaggio, a retired university professor, who is about to fly to Nice, the city of his birth and early childhood, to mark his 80th birthday and to try to ferret out the mysterious circumstan­ces of his mother’s two-year sojourn in German-occupied Nice during the Second World War.

His plans have been made, his bags are packed and his trip, timed to coincide with the French carnival season, cannot be delayed. Noah has never met his young great-nephew and is appalled when the social worker, desperate to make find a placement, suggests the boy, grandson of Noah’s late sister, accompany the professor on his visit to France. Although reluctant and feeling out of his depth, Noah agrees to take charge of the child.

Not surprising­ly, the stage is set for a whirlwind, chaos-crammed visit to a city dimly recollecte­d by the elderly professor and rudely scorned by the petulant, hard-to-please boy.

Although Donoghue’s lively tale has many attraction­s, its most appealing is the repartee between uncle and nephew, which underscore the gulfs between generation­s. Michael is technologi­cally savvy, while Noah is a novice. Noah constantly corrects Michael’s grammar, but the boy, who addresses his uncle as “dude,” refuses to rise to the bait.

Donoghue’s sparkling story is both inventive and thought-provoking. Its two engaging characters, whom events have placed in too-close proximity and whose brush with kinship has startled both, remain with the reader when the book is finished.

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