This deftly layered novel makes for rewarding read
Martha Baillie’s latest book weaves together a number of intersecting, tightly plotted narratives
Martha Baillie fans, rejoice. If Clarafinds Baillie at the top of her game with this complex, deftly layered new novel, her sixth.
Daisy is an older Toronto writer recovering from serious leg surgery. Cocooned at home to convalesce, she receives a mysterious package on her doorstep. Inside is a brilliant manuscript telling the heartbreaking story of a Syrian refugee. A note attached asks Daisy to masquerade as its author. What will Daisy decide?
Set in Toronto neighbourhoods familiar to locals and visitors alike, If Clara weaves together a number of intersecting, tightly plotted narratives, a feat all the more laudable given the novel’s slight size (only 160 pages). Besides Daisy, we meet Clara — a talented artist dealing with extreme mental-health issues; Clara’s sister, Julia, acurator; and Maurice, Julia’s best friend.
Struggling to keep her world afloat, Clara is a troubled, compelling character. We root for her, even as we are frustrated by the paranoid delusions that keep her estranged from her sister and mother. Julia in turn is a patient, respectful caregiver to Clara. Much like the entwined relation- ship between Yolandi and Elf in Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows, Baillie explores the limits and complicated bonds of love and familial commitment. Clara’s artistic brilliance, her searing sensitivity and her emotional gifts are rendered with deep compassion.
While Baillie mines the emotional architecture of Clara’s inner world, she sets up a smart and ethically loaded dilemma for Daisy.
Should Daisy pose as the author of the refugee story, in order to bring the tale to a larger readership? What are her motivations? Here, Baillie’s touch is light, leaving room for the reader to come to their own judgments and conclusions.
One weak link is Maurice, Julia’s gay best friend, who feels slightly cartoonish, with his obsessive fascination with Bruce, a mystery man who lives across from Julia’s gallery. In a novel about seeing, about how the inner gaze processes and makes sense of the outer world, his attraction feels too on point, straining credibility, particularly the repeated references to the beauty of Bruce’s “two-tone shoes.”
Overall, however, this is a fine novel — a richly rewarding read to sink into for a solitary afternoon. Trevor Corkum’s novel The Electric Boy is forthcoming with Doubleday Canada.