A GRANDMOTHER BEGINS THE STORY

Family stories echo each other, for good and ill, from one woman all the way down to her great-great-granddaughter.

The stories of five generations of Indigenous women weave through this novel, set in western Canada. Mamé has already died but is struggling to negotiate the new norms on the other side. Her daughter Geneviève has checked herself into a rehab center at age 81 after decades of alcoholism. Gen’s daughter, Lucie, is dying of cancer and has long been estranged from her own daughter, Allie. But Lucie has asked Allie’s daughter, Carter, to help her die by suicide even though Carter and Lucie have never met. All of their stories, past and present, overlap in an intergenerational sweep of families fractured by racism, poverty, misogyny, and substance abuse. But family bonds persist, and for this family the strongest bond is music. The book’s structure moves from one character to another, one time period to another, so often that some shifts are confusing. The most interesting stories, and those that get the most space, are Gen’s and Carter’s. Gen used to play piano at dance halls while her charismatic sister, Velma, played the fiddle, but Velma died years ago. As Gen detoxes, she has visions of Velma visiting so they can play together again. Carter is in the midst of divorcing her husband, a Croatian immigrant, and deciding what to do about her 3-year-old son as she battles addictions of her own—and whether to grant Lucie’s request. Some of the book’s elements of magical realism work, like Mamé’s version of the next life and Gen’s visits with Velma. Others, like chapters from the points of view of Gen’s dogs and car, seem extraneous. But the book really bogs down in a long, repetitive, intermittent narrative about a lovelorn bison that never clicks with the rest of the story.

Several intriguing characters and insightful story lines struggle to emerge from this overstuffed novel.