This question looms large when setting out to circumnavigate a novel. Indeed, it might be the most important question of all. The narrator is everything to a story. The lens for the reader’s view. The grasp of the reader’s hand. The whisper in the reader’s ear. Get the narrator right and a lot of bumps on the road may be smoothed out. Get the narrator wrong and you’ll end up in a ditch, calling for a tow truck.
In my previous work, the question of who tells the story tended to have ready answers. Kindling was always going to be the alternating voices of father and son. The fabulist fable of Infinite Blue would only ever be served by a Brothers Grimm-esque third person. In Most Valuable Potentialand Munro vs the Coyote / Exchange of Heart, the narrator needed to be a guide for the reader as they engaged with experiences outside of the mainstream for many: those of the the immigrant and the disabled. Are You Seeing Me?wasn’t quite as straightforward — the original draft had much of the third act delivered from mother Leonie’s perspective; during it’s two and a half year struggle to find a home, that approach was abandoned in favour of focusing solely on the twins (a decision that played an enormous role in the work finally securing a deal).
Tao: In Confucianism, the way,or the path to be followed.
For anyone who knows me and has read the teaser for Boy in the Blue Hammock, it will be no surprise to you that my son was the inspiration for the character of Kasper. What might be a surprise is that failed service dog, Tao, is also grounded in real-life. For over a decade, a goofy, gold-coated Labrador was part of our family due to ‘incomplete training’ with the BC Guide Dogs.
Readers familiar with my background know that I have an intellectually disabled, neurodiverse son, and readers familiar with my work know that intellectual disability and neurodiversity feature in the novels Kindling, Are You Seeing Me? and Munro vs. the Coyote / Exchange of Heart.
Inevitably, the question has arisen:
“Is that your boy on the page?”
The long answer is I used aspects of his manner, language, attitude and interests as a jumping-off point to create characters that assumed their own living, breathing, authentic fictional lives. The short answer is no.
My new novel Boy in the Blue Hammock will be out next spring and, surprise surprise, it centres an intellectually disabled, neurodiverse protagonist. And already I can hear the question again, distant but persistent, making its way towards me like I’m a destination on Google Maps:
Any author who’s ever had work rejected is familiar with these statements. Over 20 years and eight novels, I’ve had my fair share of ‘fitness’ fails and I’ve come to understand it’s sometimes literal, more often publisher shorthand for ‘We don’t think it will sell’ or ‘We don’t love it’ or ‘We don’t love it enough’. Typically, I would shake it off and saddle up for the next response, hope springing eternal from decisions not yet made.
The eighteen months of contractual futility that haunted my upcoming 2022 novel, Boy in the Blue Hammock, though? It was different. The parade of passes based on fit seemed to be communicating a new shorthand, not so much a situation of square peg / round hole.
An imaginary jacket worn by failed guide dog protagonist, Tao, plays a key role in Boyin the Blue Hammock. It gives him courage and strength in moments when he might falter. It brings with it the voice of Trainer. It permits him to do things beyond the limits of his lesser self.
He is proud of the jacket.
As I am of this one:
Many thanks to the Nightwood Editions team and their designers for this beautiful cover. And to my CAN/US agents, Olga Filina and Ali McDonald for their expert input during the process.
Boy in the Blue Hammock will be published April 30, 2022.
In a time of isolation and scarcity, a regressive regime rules with absolute power, turning neighbour against neighbour, and crushing dissidence with deadly force. A microcosm of this monstrous time: the tiny Pacific Northwest town of Gilder.
In a house on the fringes of the decimated hamlet, Tao – a failed service dog turned pet – wakes to find his leash tied to the stair, his hind leg broken and his family killed. With the world he knows shattered, there is one course of action: lay with his slain masters and wait for the enemy – the “hounds” – to return and end his life.
But it is not the hounds that find him – it is Kasper, fifteen years old, disabled, limited ability to speak, sole survivor of the family. With the discovery of Boy, Tao understands he now has a duty: guide the last living member of his pack through the ravaged streets of Gilder to safety. The destination? The only refuge he can conceive of in a world gone mad?
The site of his training five years before.
Boy in the Blue Hammock is an epic tale of loss and loyalty, of dissent and destruction, of assumption and ableism. With a powerful narrative and evocative prose, the novel poses one of the important questions of our time: when evil silences the people, who will protect those without a voice?
Myperbole 