Colin McAdam's Black DoveReviewed by Marcie McCauley
They’re so lonely, Colin McAdam’s characters. His debut novel Some Great Thing posits: “Lonely people pretend in public that they like their own company, but solitude is never comforting.” This discomfort he describes as “a heavy blanket that smothers, blocks out vision, feels safe but encourages fantasy.”
His newest novel, Black Dove, is a chronicle rooted in loneliness, secured by that heavy blanket of fantasy. Readers have a front-row view of twelve-year-old Oliver: he’s hiding in the back of the janitorial room, he’s plotting his escape from school in hopes of avoiding the bully. He had a best friend who lived across the street, but he’s gone: “That’s how the world was divided. People who had friends, and people who waited for one.” Oliver is relatable and a sympathetic character; he’s not the one wearing this blanket of fantasy. Oliver’s father tells his son stories on sleepless nights, stories that are sometimes painful and sometimes beautiful: in this way, he invites Oliver beneath the blanket. It’s Oliver’s father, who is a writer, who tells the story about the Black Dove, a beautiful flower so compelling that its force is irresistible, so powerful and seductive that addiction to it claims lives—like addiction claimed the life of his wife—Oliver’s mother. That blanket is wrapped around the shoulders of Allele Princeps, too, the proprietor of a neighbourhood shop into which Oliver rushes, to escape a bully in pursuit. The shop offers shelter and Allele offers consolation; he seems to understand, even share in Oliver’s loneliness. Oliver returns regularly and the shop scenes are vivid and evocative; he and Allele share time, and a sense of curiosity and intelligence. At the heart of this story is the relationship between Oliver’s insecurities and his yearning, and what he recognizes as a kinship in Allele’s research. But these projects reflect Allele’s pursuit of perfection. “We’re quiet because we suspect we are imperfect,” muses a character in McAdam’s second novel, Fall: “Grotesquely imperfect.” Oliver’s quiet desperation, his sense of deeply rooted inferiority, leaves him vulnerable in ways that unsettle readers. With Oliver at the core of the novel, readers return to an uncertain and frightened boy. Structurally, the novel is uneasy, fundamentally alienating. Many other perspectives revolve around Oliver, seemingly senselessly, although an underpinning of darkness and discontent provides continuity. Allele’s shop functions much like that blanket: smothering and occluding, but also secure and safe. As frequently as the story spirals back to it, readers become increasingly uncomfortable there. Oliver’s growing engagement with the shop’s secrets immerses readers in imperfection and grotesquerie. Even while Oliver views these developments as powerful, filled with possibility, readers recognize the significance of other narrative threads and see the balance of power shifting in bold scenes, sometimes violent and disturbing. Allele’s name is a spoiler of sorts and Oliver is suddenly in dangerous territory. He is still running, after all, either towards an alternative or—even still—away from his fears; it remains to be seen whether this an either/or matter. Perhaps it’s the kind of challenge described in McAdam’s third novel, A Beautiful Truth: “Survival isn’t always an act of will, and when she realized that, when she was carried through the years and felt healed, she began to see beauty in all those things we try to run away from.” Perhaps the grotesque elements, which Oliver confronts, are actually beautiful. Oliver’s father stays put, stalwartly occupying a space in Oliver’s life, concerned about the line between allowing Oliver to feel the pain of his loss, and allowing the darkness to overwhelm. (Ultimately, readers discover that Oliver’s father has his own way of running, but there spoilers lie.) He is positioned as an observer, a constant in the boy’s life but seemingly less active in this story than the shopkeeper. Beyond the shop, the story is set in the Junction, historically West Toronto: the site of cattle auctions, meat-packing plants, and abattoirs—the Stockyards. Oliver climbs the steps to the old industrial sites, now renovated into condos. He knows enough about the area to question what’s beneath the surface. To wonder what’s in the railcars that meet at the junction: “Creature of industry and need, creeping along with a bellyful of hammers. Deafening when the engine passed and then a slow pounding on the tracks.” Not only is there a pulse in this story, a steady ratcheting of tension and revelation, but there are bloody bits in dark corners of High Park, near one of the playground structures. Where children are at play, there is wilderness running alongside. How we lose our innocence, how it’s shredded in dark corners just out of reach: McAdam takes readers into darkness, decay, even death. “Most people go through life completely unaware that what they see through their own eyes is nothing like the whole story,” one character in Black Dove observes. McAdam confronts readers with other parts of the story, demands that we engage and query, respond and refute. We ponder what it requires to survive, how much of it’s in the blood that pumps through our hearts and how much exists in imagination. After all, as readers recognize, there is company in story, and in the act of expanding the view on-the-page, we expand understanding off-the-page. In difficult times, sometimes the blanket of story can save us. Marcie McCauley's work has appeared in Room, Other Voices, Mslexia, Tears in the Fence and Orbis, and has been anthologized by Sumac Press. She writes about writing at marciemccauley.com and about reading at buriedinprint.com. A descendant of Irish and English settlers, she lives in the city currently called Toronto, which was built on the homelands of Indigenous peoples - Haudenosaunee, Anishnaabeg, Huron-Wendat and Mississaugas of New Credit - land still inhabited by their descendants.
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