ISLAND AUTHOR'S ELEGANT DEBUT EXPLORES ASPIRATIONAL WOMEN
The emotionally rich, absorbing, and taut stories of Blue Runaways are distinguished by the tensions — oppositional forces at play — within them.
In her debut, Vancouver Island author Jann Everard focuses on women characters driven by aspirations. Rather than eyeing social status, professional heights or material possessions, they often yearn for intangible yet desirable states of mind: contentment, joy, clarity, connectedness, balance, placidity. When plagued by grief or heartache or anxiety, their fervent wish is to be unshackled from it.
The trouble, though, is a life where one's husband dies, not to mention one's parent, sister, or best friend. And when an arm amputation or a lover's callous rejection brings about a sudden course correction.
It's tempting to think of Everard's characters with jaws set as they reread Eat, Pray, Love and sip green tea from a vessel emblazoned with Stay Calm and Carry On, but then learning the particularity of their own character and circumstance demands something greater than a book or mug can provide.
In the stories, the women are equipped with conventional knowledge and wisdom; their epiphanies, though, relate to forging
their own path. Pilgrims of a kind, they see the route is neither straight ahead nor well-marked. They move forward nevertheless.
Ali, in Lost language, joins the Singles Outdoors Club for a wintry backcountry hike. She anticipates “some message of welcome from the land,” but senses only “air across her eardrums.” In the title story a “lost soul” — according to her mom — arrives at a remote arts retreat in Iceland. She soon hears: “There's nothing here you can't get where you live except volcanoes that erupt without warning” as well as: “This island breeds loneliness. It wasn't made for artists or for sun-filled romances.”
And Gwen, in An Imitation of Grace, needs a “buffer from the truth” and flees to Bali after her cyclist husband is killed by a skidding car. The truth, of course, follows her.
Beyond Cure traces skier Nicky, grieving the recent loss of her mother. Distraught over a wounded deer in a forest, she's forced to revisit the brute fact of death once again.
Lydia, in Watching Her Breath, envisions a poetic closure in Italy with her cancer-stricken sister. Reality has other plans for her. And veering between “wild hope and resignation,” Lea in Memento Mori struggles to accept her mother's wishes in the case of her massive stroke. Surviving her mother, Lea will be burdened by her decisions.
Aside from death, Everard explores the knottiness of love. Transient captures the dilemma of Paige, who meets her soulmate while travelling. Happily untethered from any one address, she's confounded when that soulmate drops hints about settling down. Led by “curiosity, not depression,” Torontonian Margaret in Force Field travels to an “alien landscape” in southern Saskatchewan for a first date. Tired of her own misery after “unanticipated dumping,” “drawn and downtrodden and heartsick” Jillian in The Bus Stops Here allows herself a moment's spontaneity in the prairie foothills. Gradually, a plan, “like empty thought bubbles, ready for” her to fill in, emerges.
Populated with appealingly complex characters, Everard's elegant stories present the sort of serious conundrums faced by everyone. These dilemmas elicit questions: “How can I manage this?” and “What should I do next?” The possibilities are never obvious in the case of Everard's protagonists. They commit to their answers, however, and suggest the empowerment that comes with fully taking your life in your own hands.