A rock ’n’ roll life resonates
Coming-of-age story set in small-town B.C. rooted in character and anchored with explosive prose
The ability to create the universal from the specific is such a key aspect of good fiction that it is often overlooked.
But by following the life of a particular character, readers are drawn into wider themes and potentially emotional connection.
By embracing the concrete details of a locale, readers immerse themselves in an entire and wider world.
It’s a feat readily apparent in From Up River and For One Night Only, the startling new novel from Vancouver writer Brett Josef Grubisic.
The novel chronicles the lives of four teenagers between Labour Day 1980 and mid-February 1981.
Jay, Gordon, Dee and Em decide to form aband, not with dreams of stardom but as a way of establishing their bona fides for when they escape their hometown, headed for their dream lives in New York and beyond.
While it is the narrative through line, the journey toward the Battle of the Bands contest quickly becomes of only secondary interest. Rather, the story is driven by the four characters, each of them carefully etched and fully realized, and the world around them.
River Bend City is an imagined version of Mission, B.C., where Grubisic grew up, a couple of hours by bus from Vancouver.
River Bend is a grotty place to grow up, provincial and mean, “the single consolation (being) that the situation could be worse” in one of the smaller towns further east, “ringed by puddles, cow and chicken pen stink, and green-then-funereal swaths of corn, strawberries and Brussels sprouts.”
It’s not a comfortable place for teenagers who don’t fit in, who are struggling with sex and drugs, with parents who are overbearing or absent or who are trying too hard, who are bullied and ignored by turns.
Having grown up in one of those towns (which the book refers to by its nickname, Agony), I can vouch for the details.
The novel’s world of Field’s stores and crappy Chinese restaurants, of Brownie’s chicken outlets and cruel gym teachers, is perfectly rendered, but its power comes from what Grubisic does with it.
The story, rooted in character and anchored with voluble, explosive prose, transcends the grey particulars, quickly becoming universal in its force.
This isn’t really a rock and roll novel; this is a powerful coming-of-age story readers will relate to no matter where they come from. Robert Wiersema’s latest book is Black Feathers.