WE ALL TELL OURSELVES STORIES

On the first day of my MFA fiction class at the University of British Columbia, my professor, Brian Brett, shared the story of the white spider. “All animals tell stories to themselves and to other animals. Even the small, white spider stalking its prey is telling itself a story. Few among us consider the stories they invent every day, but since we are writers it is our duty to understand the nature of story.” Shani Mootoo’s latest novel, Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, an exploration of love, family, identity and gender, has a deep connection to Brett’s story of the white spider. Mootoo has produced a stunning meditation on story, on how our lives are shaped by both the stories we’re told and the stories we tell. Mootoo’s chosen animal is a crab — which, unlike a spider, dangling by the weight of gravity, moves forward by inching sideways. Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab is set between Toronto and Trinidad. Readers are first introduced to Sid, the co-parent of the novel’s protagonist, Jonathan Lewis-Adey, whom she raised until the age of nine with her partner, a successful Toronto writer. After ending a decadelong relationship with India, Sid vanishes. After years of searching, Jonathan tracks down his long-lost parent, whom he discovers living as a man in Trinidad. Jonathan makes several trips to Trinidad, and as the novel begins, he is beckoned once more, this time because Sydney is dying. Jonathan hears Sydney’s life story, which moves sideways, backwards and forwards in its telling, like the titular crab. It is a gorgeously written novel, which leaves readers to ponder the stories we are told, how we disguise our true selves and eventually need to tell our own story — even if, like the white spider, only to ourselves, to reconcile our lives.