Chasing down a dream
Wanting to believe the impossible, to grasp the unattainable and to experience the unknowable are all aspects of the human condition that hold the dreamers among us in thrall. The Gallery of Lost Species is Ottawa poet Nina Berkhout’s portrait of that yearning and the way it shapes the lives of those who experience it.
Set in Ottawa, this debut novel is the story of Edith Walker, the younger of two sisters in a family that revolves around the talent and beauty of the older daughter, Vivienne. Conscripted by her ambitious mother, Constance, into competing in children’s beauty pageants, Vivienne is the prizewinning family star. An ungainly bookworm, Edith is acutely conscious of her lesser value in her mother’s eyes. She basks instead in the company of her quiet father, a defeated artist who works as a janitor in the public service and collects discarded treasures that he repairs.
Although Edith initially hero-worships her sister, when she is 13 their relationship changes. On a family camping trip, Edith glimpses a unicorn — or so she believes. She also meets her first love, Liam, a young geologist besotted with Vivienne.
The trip marks the start of the sisters’ divergent identities and Edith’s pursuit of lasting love. It’s also the start of her interest in cryptozoology: the quest and study of cryptids, those elusive animals whose existence is rumoured but unsubstantiated.
Berkhout weaves metaphors and symbols throughout The Gallery of Lost Species. As Vivienne pursues her own unattainable dream of being a great artist, Edith joins the staff of the National Gallery, cataloguing rare works, and meets Theo, an elderly cryptozoologist who charms her with the stories of his travels in search of a fabled koaobird. His pursuit of the rare or perhaps mythical animals who fascinate Edith parallels her near-obsession with Liam.
Berkhout does a masterful job of capturing the self-deception and rationalizations of someone desperate to believe she can will her lover into returning her feelings. She is equally adept at evoking the gut-wrenching pain and loneliness that follows rejection: “Just before Christmas I’d received a polite postcard from Chile, wishing me happy holidays. One last tangible trace of Liam. I inhaled deeply from it, but, like the fir at the Gallery, the paper smelled of nothing.”
The portrayal of a disintegrating relationship is not new territory for Berkhout, who also explores it in Arrivals and Departures, her 2010 poetry collection. Loneliness, too, is a theme that threads through Elseworlds, her most recent book of stand-alone poems.
Working in prose, rather than poetry, allows Berkhout to be more descriptive, and to “meander,” she has said in interviews. Aside from its meanderings about the cryptids, however, The Gallery of Lost Species is tightly focused around the Walker family and the dreams and disappointments of its members. Her imagery is just as sharp and evocative in the novel as in her poetry.
Berkhout also succeeds in creating characters to care about, despite the seeming inevitability of their fates. Her portrayals of Vivienne, as she slips into addiction, of Edith’s helpless efforts to stem that tide and of their mother’s ability to compartmentalize to cope with her own pain are insightful and accurate reflections of the reactions of family members affected by addiction.
Constance is perhaps the least fully realized of all the characters. She seems somewhat stereotypical, trapped through an unplanned pregnancy to marry a man who disappoints her and living vicariously through Vivienne while neglecting Edith.
Despite the pain that permeates this lovely first novel, in introducing Edith, Berkhout has created a character who is, at her core, resilient. Though she alters her dreams, she doesn’t stop striving for happiness.
The Gallery of Lost Species will remind you of your own desperate longings and how you once chased them. Laura Eggertson is an Ottawa-based journalist, writer and editor.