Celebrating Canada's 150th: May

I enjoyed Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach, so I was looking forward to this book too.

Book Summary: Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize: With striking originality and precision, Eden Robinson, the author of the classic Monkey Beach and winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Fellowship, blends humor with heartbreak in this compelling coming-of-age novel. Everyday teen existence meets indigenous beliefs, crazy family dynamics, and cannibalistic river otters . . . The exciting first novel in her trickster trilogy.  Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who's often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he's also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can't rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer (he calls her Baby)--and now she's dead.  Jared can't count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can't rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family's life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat...and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he's the son of a trickster, that he isn't human. Mind you, ravens speak to him--even when he's not stoned.   You think you know Jared, but you don't.

My Thoughts:   I enjoyed Monkey Beach, but I LOVED Son of a Trickster!  You can tell that Eden Robinson has really upper her game and her writing is not just lush and cinematic, like it was in Monkey Beach, but her pacing and plot is much tighter and this results in a quickly paced, gripping novel of heart-break, love and loss.  Her main character, 16 yr old Jared, is the kind of cliche that everyone loves to rail against: scraping by academically,  smoking and drinking too much, dealing drugs, socially marginalized, living from hand to mouth and surrounded by an incredibly dysfunctional family.  It's so easy to blame a kid like that - and his family/community for producing him, but Robinson lets us in the backdoor to view his life from the inside and we see a teenager of incredible resilience, strength and compassion.  We see a kid who defies expectation at every turn and eventually finds courage and wisdom IN his culture, rather than despite it.  As Eden Robinson describes it: You think you know Jared, but you don't.

Equally compelling is Jared's new friend, Sarah, who is herself broken and hurting.  Sarah is a complex character who is alternately gentle and brutal; she pushed people away and then tenderly holds them close.  Jared is both drawn to her and repelled by her as well - and as he gets to know her, and he lets her into his own life, its mesmerizing to watch these two hurting kids find strength and courage in each other.

An excellently written novel that will take you on a roller coaster ride of emotions and leave you eager for the next installment of this planned trilogy.  I'll be first in line for the next book!