THE QUEEN OF JUNK ISLAND

After experiencing sexual trauma, Dell is lost.

Socially ungraceful and an outsider at school, she’s spending the summer at the island cottage where her mother, Anne, grew up, with Anne’s new boyfriend, Joe, and his daughter, Ivy. Her days are filled with picking up trash dumped by an unruly tenant and little else. Anne is overprotective and seems to like prickly Ivy more than her own daughter; Ivy has something against Dell from the outset. On top of that, Dell is being haunted by her maternal Aunt Julie, who was disavowed by the family and died the year before Dell was born. Jones never shies away from brutally honest discussions of sexual topics that were even more taboo in the 2000s when the book is set, capturing in particular the toxicity of biphobia as Dell is confused by her intense desire, earlier for boys and now, for Ivy. Ivy’s relationship with Dell shifts from possible stepsisters to cautious almost-friends to lovers; at its core it is about two difficult girls who understand each other’s strangeness better than anyone else. The Ontario setting isn’t claustrophobic, rather allowing the characters to exist within their own universe. As Dell excavates family secrets, it’s clear this is also a story about intergenerational love; understanding ghosts, both internal and external; and becoming a person who will allow others to love them. Dell and her family are White; Joe is unspecified First Nations, and Ivy’s mother is White.

Haunting, unusual, and real.