In the title story of Anne Perdue’s debut collection, Eugene runs a small home reno business in Toronto, daily negotiating the indifferent work habits of his two employees and the dissembling required to generate a profit. Worker Tim is almost a gift compared to Stu, whose beer diet and rooming-house lifestyle play havoc with his drywall skills.
Perdue’s opening pages are initially disorienting, slipping from past tense to present, mashing up multiple points of view in the space of single pages or even short paragraphs – but the catchall structure pays off. The boss and his team never really mesh; cross-purpose is the nature of their working relationship. The tale’s comic edge, quirky-sad from the get-go, becomes gradually darker and more affecting as Stu’s messy world slouches to centre stage. A bad thing happens. You feel a series of soft blows to the gut, a bare-bones pathos emerging simply from events. I wish only that Perdue had excised her final message. It was already clear thanks to her subtler skills.
The Escapists goes for full-out comedy as we join a young couple on the latest of their seaside holidays. Doug’s been doing well in the plumbing trade and they’ve decided to splurge on a high-end Mexican resort. They quickly find themselves out of their depth as their aggressive and unschooled bonhomie rattles the genteel hauteur of a professional couple they buttonhole in the dining room. There are some solid yuks here, though the accelerating boorishness of Sharlene and Doug begins to feel more in service of scenery-chewing performance than credibility.
Inheritance presents a deck-building dad whose bark and swagger is the show barely masking a volcanic rage. The alpha male among a brood of unruly daughters and patronizing in-laws, Leo is captured on a hot afternoon, rumbling with the fore-shocks that unmistakably precede an eruption. Unproductive point-of-view shifts somewhat mar the setup, but Perdue’s ghastly climax is riveting, her wind-down the more powerful for showing Leo’s rage still intact even while he stares his guilt in the face.
CA-NA-DA soars above its oddly irrelevant title. Sally has a problem son, still at home after a college degree and bristling with ingratitude. When she sets up breakfast for him – favourite cereal in favourite bowl – he stares bleary-eyed, flicks a finger dipped in milk at his mother’s face and says, “hate to break it to you, moms, but I want eggs.” I confess, I wanted to push the lad’s surly face into his bowl of Mini-Wheats. It’s a hackle-raising and seductive intro. The form of the dysfunction feels crystal clear, and now we simply must know the causes and motives behind it. Here Perdue hits a stride that makes less considerably more than the rambling more she often employs elsewhere. We get less explanation, more (and more compelling) action. A stranger invited into the household becomes at once a rival mom figure and a carnal catalyst.
Next up we meet Jackie, charged with care of her widowed mother. Ailing Leona comes with mandatory cigarettes and oxygen tank: a walking (well, shuffling) imminent explosion. When Jackie’s out with mom, she scowls. She scowls at passersby and her own thoughts and dogs tied up outside the liquor store. The sour face fits her “like a lead-lined vest – the kind you wear while having your teeth X-rayed.” The tale is titled Pooey, mom’s catchall dismissive, but Perdue doesn’t trade in any similar cheap shots. Jackie is torn by the mess of her mother’s decline, yes, but the bond is finally more powerful than the burden. A needlessly complicated back-story somewhat hobbles the momentum here, but the core drama holds true.
Theories of Relativity drops in on aging-hippie parents with a teen son and daughter still seeking identities they can call their own. Perdue’s impulsive bouncing between points of view is more distracting in this effort, but Chris, the son, eventually emerges as the pivotal figure, his resentments and concealed moral storms flaring and ebbing. Fires – accidental, then deliberate – bookend the tale.
In the closing entry, a young couple is driven to near-murderous desperation by their nightmare starter home and a series of hack handymen. Riffs of screwball comedy give way to hurled accusations and exchanges of seething rancour, building to a spectacular closing battle in the crumbling ruins. Here and elsewhere, Perdue’s strong character work supplies a nuance and authenticity that happily counters her sometimes scattershot approach to the complexities of third-person narration.
Jim Bartley is The Globe and Mail’s first-fiction reviewer.
