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Cary Fagan's fifth novel, Valentine's Fall, is a charming and romantic confection. Valentine Schwartz, the title character, was a love-struck teenager who fell off the roof of his high school while wearing medieval armour stolen from the Royal Ontario Museum. His goal was to show his girlfriend that he loved her. Instead he was smashed to bits.

Valentine and the narrator, Huddie Rosen, bond over Val's first stupid manoeuvre. He decides to dive into a partially drained swimming pool at school. As Huddie says, “The first time I ever spoke to Valentine Schwartz, he was prepared to do something so remarkably lacking in sense that I thought he must be joking.”

Valentine's Fall, by Cary Fagan, Cormorant Books, 289 pages, $21

The other boys think Val's plan is worth taking bets over, while Huddie is the only one who mentions that diving into the pool is not such a good plan. When he points this out, the two boys connect: “Valentine looked up. For the first time his eyes caught mine and he smiled. It was a thoroughly winning smile and he won me over with it. Then he lowered his head again and his feet lifted off the edge.”

Valentine is a popular rich boy, but he's also emotionally damaged. Huddie's realization that Val lacks any common sense is borne out by Val's subsequent actions, the melodramatic and the traumatic. And Val becomes a strange, mythical high-school hero.

Twenty-five years later, Valentine's high school is having a memorial for him, and Huddie happens to travel to Toronto to visit his mother, leaving his wife and daughters in Prague, where he has been working as a bluegrass mandolin player for many years. The novel moves back and forth in time to reveal the lives of a bunch of Jewish kids and how much Huddie's life has been affected by Valentine's fall. It's like going to a high-school reunion without having to be there.

“ The novel is gently humorous, even though it deals with serious issues such as love and loss ”

Another key death for Huddie is that of his father, prompting Huddie's flight from Toronto. Mr. Rosen longed for a transfer back to his hometown, Chicago, but got Knoxville instead. Huddie decides to go to the University of Tennessee even though his father dies before the family makes the move. And that death is only three months after Valentine's, so escape is clearly the issue.

But Tennessee gives Huddie his “religion,” bluegrass. Unfortunately it's insufficient: “The thing about music is that you can trust it. It's emotionally reliable. Playing or listening, it gives you what you need, when you need it. A lot of the time, that has seemed like enough to me. But it isn't enough. That's what I have sometimes failed to remember.”

In the present story, Huddie is also trying to cope with marital breakdown. Even before returning to Canada, Huddie has been living apart from his family. He misses Marta and the girls desperately and tries to think of how to get them back. In Toronto, he reconnects with family and some of his high-school friends, including Val's old girlfriend, who is organizing the memorial.

Fagan has a completely easy and fluid style, and he controls the narrative so as to create suspense. What will happen at the memorial? Will Huddie get his family back? Will he take over his Uncle Norman's business? Will he return to Prague and fight for his family? How much will his mother make from his father's collection of blues records? (Huddie's father had amassed a serious collection, which his widow is selling on eBay, much to Huddie's astonishment. Her eBay moniker is “LittleOnline-Mama.”)

The novel is gently humorous, even though it deals with serious issues such as love and loss, and Fagan makes use of Jewish stereotypes to develop some of the fun. Going out for dinner with his mother, Uncle Norman and Aunt Min, Huddie presents a silly family meal complete with arguments about what to eat. Uncle Norman warns against the pastrami; Huddie has to order it “just to defy him.”

Huddie's high-school pals have a range of occupations: realtor, writer, even principal of their old high school. Fagan also makes use of an apparently encyclopedic knowledge of bluegrass music, and at times, Huddie's narrative lapses into a lecture on bluegrass. The dissemination of information does nothing to further the plot, but it does show Huddie's passion. The fact that he would even consider giving up the life of musician in order to get his family back indicates how much he loves them.

The novel hinges on a huge surprise, one that is just not believable. Fagan is going for an effect rather than verisimilitude, so readers need to just enjoy the ride, not question the method. Ultimately, though, the revelation of the secret is unsatisfying – as is the maintenance of the secret of why Huddie's marriage has foundered. But overall, the novel is an enjoyable, light read.

Candace Fertile teaches at Camosun College in Victoria, B.C.