André Babyn's ​Evie of the Deepthorn

Reviewed by Amanda Earl

(Dundurn Press, 2020)

At the centre of this novel is a forest. Evie is an imaginary character, a little girl who vanquishes a queen in this forest, after her parents are murdered. Kent’s brother dies in this forest. Rezza sees sex between young men taking place in this forest; Kent and Sarah can’t keep away from it, and it haunts their dreams and their lives; it is the scene of violence and death.
 
In Via. 48 Dante Variations, Caroline Bergvall presents the various translations of “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura che la diritta via era smarrita” The Divine Comedy– Pt. 1 Inferno – Canto I – (1–3).
 
I like this version by Rossetti: “In midway of the journey of our life I found myself within a darkling wood, Because the rightful pathway had been lost.”
 
A forest is a liminal space, a space of grief in this novel. Deepthorn feels like an old-world medieval name for a forest. “The Deepthorn, “vast and primeval”…”a continent onto itself.”
 
Durham is a small Southern Ontario town where Kent and Sarah fester as high school students, each one trying to cope with grief: the deaths of Kent’s brother, of Sarah’s father. At one point, Sarah writes that it is only in fiction that one can find triumph.
 
And when discussing the concept of suspension of disbelief, Kent writes, “…not that reality was being suspended, but changed – creating an entirely new reality, dreaming the characters into existence.”
 
Perhaps that is why the story of Evie is a repeated refrain, as variation in this novel, whether as a low-budget Canadian film created through government funds that Kent sees and resonates with, or a novel written by a teen Sarah and then burnt up, or the poem that Kent eventually writes.
 
In the story within this story, Evie, a little girl, vanquishes the queen, but there’s no one for Sarah and Kent to vanquish, no one to take revenge on for the deaths of their own loved ones. Kent writes about other stories, As You Like It and The Catcher in the Rye, and a young Kent tries to understand the role of fate and whether one is able to be in charge of one’s own destiny: “no one is anything so much as the role they’ve been forced to play.”
 
Babyn paints a picture of struggle, boredom and trying to cope with life in a small town, and it is only through art that it is possible to do so, whether through the invented story of Evie or through Kent’s documentary, where he processes his grief for his brother, as if making the documentary could bring him back to life and “summon him home.”
 
Even Jeff, Kent’s brother, tries to cope by playing Magic, the Gathering, a fantasy game that he tries to use to win a tournament to make enough money to get out of high school, but that kind of magical thinking seldom works out. There’s no way out of Durham except the coffin for Jeff, for Kent, for Sarah’s father, and even for Sarah who finds herself returning, breaks her arm, and then fears she’s lost her job at the call centre: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave” (“Hotel California”). Durham haunts and imprisons its inhabitants, as small towns tend to do for some, and for me, which is why I live in the city.
 
The layering in this book is masterful. When writing about the film, Kent comments, “When Evie leaves the tent, limping, and stands before the guards waiting outside, it’s impossible not to reflect on the fact that every action has its consequence, and that the consequences of all actions are necessarily dire, because they bring us one step closer to where we are all going.” Does fate play a role in the tragic endings in this novel? Is there an inevitability to the way it unfolds?
 
He identifies with Evie, as if he, too, is preparing himself for a journey, but realizes that the journey he’s preparing himself for is just life. There’s no glory in it. Back to the idea that the only triumph is in fiction, in art, in making and responding to art. The real world that Kent and Sarah find themselves in is bleak upon bleak, and it doesn’t get any less bleak as they age. Sarah is in a boring relationship that is going nowhere and working for a call centre. Her mother has remarried and all traces of her father are gone. Kent has been forced to return to Durham to care for his dying mother.
 
I was reminded somewhat of Jade Wallace’s novel, Anomia (Palimpsest Press, 2024), another supernatural work set in a small town and on the edges of a forest, the Unwood. Both novels could be said to fit into the subgenre of Southern Ontario Gothic with their stark portrayals of life in a small town and the mysteries and dark shadows therein.
 
What feels very accurate to me is the portrait of grief throughout and the struggles of teens trying to live within a world that boxes them in.
 
I also greatly appreciated Babyn’s portrait of adolescence, how painful it is not to fit in, whether it is because of terrible acne such as Sarah has, or feelings of not belonging, as both Kent and Sarah experience, his willingness to be friends with a bully because he is the only one who seems willing to be Kent’s friend.
 
What I get most of all from this novel is that struggle of how to overcome the inevitable. I have this too. I turn to art to cope as these characters tried to do. It’s a novel that I read over a month, while waiting for the last relentless winter to end. I appreciated the gothic elements, but I related most to the sense of struggle here. It’s an insightful book and it criss-crosses and layers reality and fantasy in ways that I haven’t really seen before. 

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Photo credit: Jim Johnstone

Amanda Earl (she/her) writes, edits, mentors, publishes, reviews and makes vispo on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl offers a 12-hour poetry mentorship program, and thanks to a patron, one scholarship is available. Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry.  Please visit AmandaEarl.com for more information or subscribe to Amanda Thru the Looking Glass for musings on finding joy in difficult times.