FRANKIE FOREVER

In McDonald’s novel, a grieving young woman encounters a stranger deeply connected to her tragedy.

In her fiction debut, the author introduces readers to 20-year-old Vancouver resident Frankie, who’s badly reeling after the recent death of her best friend, Anna. She and Anna, and all of the other young people in McDonald’s story, live in an environment of smoking and drinking and large amounts of casual drug use; now that Anna is gone, Frankie only wants to lose herself in drink- and drug-fueled house parties. “I want to forget who I am,” she thinks at one such party. “I long to be that girl. That girl doesn’t have a dead best friend and a hole in her heart.” In addition to her grief, Frankie is also bearing the weight of guilt. Anna’s family has put forward the story that she died of a freak seizure, but Frankie knows the truth—a truth that prompts Anna’s grieving parents to blame Frankie (it’s also a truth Frankie shares with Anna’s brother, Aaron, with whom she is sleeping). Complicating these personal dynamics is a mysterious character, Alba, who exhibits supernatural powers and hints at her own deep connection with Anna’s family. Frankie also sleeps with her: “I feel like my skin has caught fire,” she reflects at one point, “the coldness of Alba’s body burns my flesh with white hot desire.” The prose shifts very effectively between raw realism recalling Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big Cityand the sharp lyricism of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees. The supernatural elements represented by Alba at first feel distinctly at odds with the story of young love and grief, and at no point in the novel is Frankie herself even remotely likable—but McDonald manages to bring it all together in a narrative that’s both moving and exciting.

An emotional and involving tale of grief and the powers of darkness.