Eden Robinson’s first novel is a first-person narrative related by Lisa of her younger brother Jimmy lost at sea. Used as a pretext for describing her experience growing up in the Haisla First Nations community of Kitamaat. The author has a way of writing that makes one smell the foggy salt air and hear the waves slapping against the rocks on the shore. Can you hear the firehall siren wailing to warn of an approaching tsunami? Can you smell the cockles cooking on the stove or imagine one squirming live in your mouth as you eat it raw? It’s as if talking about the younger little brother who was forever following her around and for whose safety she was held responsible is her way of bringing him back to life. As the older sis she still feels responsible.
It’s the kind of book you read slowly because you want to savour every detail. Uncles are fun because they tell naughty stories about your parents. Like the time the brothers rolled out their sleeping bags on the beach one warm night and awoke surrounded by one ton basking seals. Trapped in his bag one brother says, thought it was my wife hogging the covers as usual. The speaker appears to be free-associating experiences from her past with present day events or places she goes. Although the book is ostensibly about the search for a lost brother he is rarely present in memories related and we get few descriptions of him or a sense of his presence. It’s as if he’s already absent. There is the usual talk of residential schools, pre-teen smoking, booze, drugs, sex and dreams unrealized.
Ultimately the book is about Haisla culture and traditions and the landscape they inhabit. And life on the Rez where a friends bad tires can end up cosing you a trip to the Olympics.
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