Book Review: Nikki Everts "Evidence of Uncertain Origin"

As part of my second career as a journalist, I've become something of a collector of business cards. One day while at the Farmer's Market I bumped into someone I'd never met before and we had a brief conversation about Saint Louis Missouri (she'd noticed I was using a shopping bag promoting that city's excellent library). She mentioned that she'd published a novel and I asked for and received a card. Eventually I emailed her and got a review copy of Evidence of Uncertain Origin---which turned out to be an engaging "whodunit" set in Montreal during the October Crisis of 1970.

For those of you who are too young to remember what this was, it was one of the key points in the transition of Quebec society from being a "second class" part of Canada to being an "equal partner". This was a long process that involved elements like the quiet revolution, bilingualism, the rise of the Parti Québécois, and, two referendums on independence: one in 1980 and the other in 1995.

The October Crisis was about the rise and fall of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ). In a nutshell, this was a group of nationalist radicals who sought to "accelerate" already existing divisions between working class Francophones in Quebec and the Anglo elite who controlled the province. They did this by trying to goad the authorities into over-reaction through a series of relative minor bombings (a lot of mailboxes blew up). The authorities generally "refused to take the bait", which led to an eventual escalation into kidnapping. This cost them the support of most of the population when the authorities started to play rough. The Trudeau (Pierre Elliott) government imposed the War Measures act (precursor of the Emergencies Act recently used by the Justin Trudeau) yet still managed to show a light hand in that it negotiated with the kidnappers for the release of one of their hostages and allowed key members to escape to Cuba. 

Soldier guarding buildings in Montreal, 1970. Image from Royal Montreal Regiment website, originally from the Toronto Star (used under Fair Dealing). 

The result of the affair was a collective decision by both Anglos and Francophones that there are better mechanisms for dealing with the legitimate grievances of the population---which led to the election of leaders like Rene Levesque and the introduction of various regulations aimed at both allowing French Canadians to be "masters of their own home" and at the same time, more welcome in the rest of Canada. 

I'll let Trudeau himself explain one key part of this. (If he seems a bit heated, it's because this was a very controversial project at the time, and fought against by many small "c" conservatives.)

People of good will sometimes say that Trudeau over-reacted when he brought in the War Measures Act, but I suspect that they don't understand the mood of the country at the time. Leading up to this event, radical Quebec separatists had been raiding militia armouries and construction sites to steal weapons and explosives. (If memory serves, when I was researching another story in the Mercury archives I read that Guelph's militia unit had some of it's inventory sent to Camp Borden where it could be better guarded.) I can only imagine what would happen today if some organization---the Proud Boys or Black Lives Matter maybe---started raiding militia armouries to steal weapons!    

Having said that, there does seem to have been something of a paranoid reaction by the police in some ways. For example, the Ontarion (the University of Guelph student newspaper) attempted to publish the FLQ manifesto, but local police prevented it on suspicion that this constituted "sedition" under the War Measures Act. But while people will no doubt take refuge in the "slippery slope" fallacy, the salient points to remember are that the federal and Quebec provincial governments didn't really know how big a problem they were facing and in the long term no one ended-up in a Canadian version of the Gulag. 

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Evidence of Uncertain Origins brings all this context to bear on the lives of two Anglo Quebec sisters---Sondra and Kit---who are dealing with the death of their grandfather. Nikki Everts brings in the political background, but it is closely entwined with the family issues. In this book the "personal is the political" and the "political gets personal". 

Nikki Everts in a photo series that look suspiciously like a mug shot---. Images provided by the author.

Sondra is happily married with two children, but she has a history of being somewhat mentally fragile. She's much more "in tune" with her instincts and believes that she's had a visitation by grand-dad in a dream which points to his having been murdered. Kit is much more scientifically-inclined and is concerned that Sondra is sliding back into depression and worse. She's left Montreal and now lives in Hamilton where her husband, Paul, is studying medicine at McMaster. Kit is toiling away at a job she loathes to support him and is afraid she's following in her mother's foot-steps, who eventually became so unhappy from playing second-fiddle to Kit's father's career (he too is a doctor) that she descended into alcoholism, leaving Gramps and Grandma to raise them instead of her. As the mystery gets solved and Quebec politics becomes more intrusive in their lives, her commitment to the marriage unravels. 

In conversation, Everts freely admits that she sees a parallel between Kit's marital problems and the issues threatening the break-up of Canada. As well, the story also brings in other issues that were "in the air" at the time. For example, two of the minor characters turn out to be gay lovers who were upset about Gramps' self-righteous homophobia. (It was so early in that issue's progress that Sondra and Kit both are startled to realize that their grandfather's prejudice was a real "issue".) 

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I can't get too much more into the plot for fear of giving it all away (it is a mystery, after all), but I can offer a few further general points. 

Several people with more insight than me have pointed out that human beings seem to be hard-wired to learn from stories rather than catalogues of facts. Everts has written a book that explains to younger people what it felt like to be living in Quebec at this time. To cite two examples, it points out how central CBC radio was to a certain segment of the population. It also has Kit describe the chemical composition of cat pee that makes it so pungent---which gives us a glimpse into her scientific mind and also a "whiff" of life in a run-down apartment in the urban core.       

In an interview, Everts told me that during the time of the novel she had just emigrated to Quebec from California. She lived on a farm in the countryside not far from Montreal, but I suspect that as a university graduate (microbiology) she was interested in finding out all she could about the exotic new country she found herself in. And at the time, Quebec nationalism would have absolutely dominated both print media and the CBC. 

As just an ordinary person without any connection to the "movers and shakers", Everts probably lacked any "inside dope". But this was probably more than sufficiently compensated by the new immigrants hyper-sensitivity to the differences she found around her. (For example, she told me that she was surprised---in a good way---that the Canadian establishment was willing to negotiate with the FLQ cell, allow some members to escape to Cuba, and, then years later allowed them to return to Quebec. Would this ever be allowed in the USA?) Future historians will no doubt want to read cabinet documents, academic dissertations, and, newspaper articles from the time. But they will also need to read first-hand accounts and fiction written by people who lived through the events in order to get a feel for how ordinary people experienced them. I think that Evidence of Uncertain Origins is a useful addition to this literature.

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I've taken on writing these book reviews because I think it's important for a functioning community---like Guelph---to have a localized artistic scene. It's not just enough to have a few "rock star" authors, like Margaret Atwood. We also need to have local "word artisans". That's because culture thrives on conversations, instead of lectures. Lectures are where one person does all the talking and everyone else just listens. Real conversations involve a back-and-forth. That's what's happening when a local author writes a story about things that you experience---like cooking in the kitchen, listening to CBC radio, and, wondering if and when the Prime Minister is going to "drop the hammer" against a small group of people causing chaos in society. (Will some future author write a mystery set in Ottawa during the "Freedom Convoy"?)

A lot of people take it "as a given" that there is a value in having local musicians instead of just listening to recorded music. I think that people should also appreciate local writers who bring their own local and regional viewpoint to the page. The promise of the World Wide Web is that more and more people can get involved in the "community conversation". That's what I suspect Marshall McLuhan was fumbling towards with his statements "the medium is the message" and "we increasingly live in a global village". 

Right now what has often happened instead is that capitalism has tried to change the conversation into a competition. The tech lord's algorithms seek to sift out a very small number of big name "influencers" who can then build a giant base that can be monetized to sell advertising. But the real promise of the Web is to create functioning communities---both geographic and of interests---that will be able to knit together an increasingly complex and resilient human ecosystem. 

We've been told that it helps the planet to "eat local" and some hard-cores have even suggested we restrict ourselves to the "100 mile diet". That's maybe too much. But I do think it is important to learn to appreciate the local. And I think that music and literature is much the same. I think it would help Guelph and area if everyone decided to listen to local music and read local writers at least part of the time. If you'd like to make the effort to do this, you might want to attend the Wellington County Writer's Festival on April 23. (To be totally honest, I won't be going---COVID's sixth wave is here and I'd like to avoid getting the bug as long as possible. But there will be other ones in the future.)   

If I've tweaked your interest, you can find Evidence of Uncertain Origin at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the Bookshelf Bookstore in downtown Guelph, and, other places listed by the publisher: Arboretum Press.  

 

Arboretum Press Logo

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Book Review: Fault Lines, by Tsveti Nacheva

I have read a lot of novels in my life, but generally not the sort that dig deep into human psychology. Instead, I have been attracted to ones that work with ideas. I've read Tolstoy's War and Peace many times (I've lost track---over six times for sure), lots of science fiction (I just finished reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy)---both of these books are mostly philosophy of history. I also like formulaic mysteries---during this pandemic I've read just about all the Kathy Reichs forensic whodunits and Craig Johnson's "magic Western" Walt Longmire books. These books are inspired by current events and meditate on how human beings navigate larger social forces.

This isn't to say that there is no value in novels that delve deep into the human psyche, just that for one reason or another I find learning how other people think somewhat intimidating. I'm a lot more comfortable thinking about ideas than instincts and emotions, so what passes for a "entertaining leisurely activity" gets chosen accordingly. That's probably a good reason why I should read them---but that doesn't mean that I find it any easier to do so. 

I remember reading once that novels of psychological introspection only became popular in the late 19th century and this was part of a significant change in the way human beings looked at society. This makes sense to me. Pretty much the only way any of us can really put ourselves into the skin of someone else is by reading the introspective descriptions put out by that subclass of novelists who do this sort of writing. And with the decline of religion in people's lives and rise of social sciences like sociology and psychology, it only made sense that art would decide to spend less time looking outward towards God and philosophy, and instead direct our gaze inward towards the human psyche. 

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This gets me to Tsveti Nacheva's book Fault Lines. It's a mystery, but it's told from the point-of-view of someone---Laurie---who about as alien to me as a Martian. When the novel begins, she's a good-looking university student who's involved with a young man, Nate. She's at a Halloween party where she has too much to drink and wakes up in bed and notices her boyfriend nowhere around.

She looks around and finds a set of his clothes drenched in blood. He comes back from a five-mile "morning run", and explains the clothes as being a result of a malfunction of an elaborate Halloween installation that involved a fountain of pig's blood. 

Unfortunately, it turns out that the woman Laurie shares an apartment with, Ashley---who was also at the party---has disappeared without a trace. 

This results in a latent distance between herself and Nate. Laurie never asks him directly about whether he killed Ashley, and lets his suspicious behavior the next morning hang over the relationship until it strangles it. Eventually they split up. She leaves the small university town they live in---"Solway", which is obviously based on Guelph---gets involved with a minor television/movie star, and, works as a producer for a schlocky television show titled Fault Lines. 

I'm not going to go into any details, because the book is plot-driven and I understand many people enjoy being surprised with twists and endings, and don't like "spoilers". Suffice it to say, she goes back to Solway to research a potential episode of Fault Lines which brings her back into Nate's world. Revelations present themselves, there may or may not be a Ghost involved, someone is framed for Ashley's murder, and, Laurie ends up back with Nate and lives "happily ever after". 

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I paid a $180 bill to SoundCloud today. That's the service that I use to host the audio part of the interviews I do for this blog. This month I cancelled my subscription to the Toronto Star because at $204/year I felt that I wasn't getting "value for my money". I've been using Scribd instead, which costs a little over half as much, but gives me access to a huge number of information sources. (I also sell three books on Scribd, and receive what I consider very fair royalties per reader.)

I'm sharing this info just to tell you that I do have costs incurred while publishing this blog. That's a significant part of the reason why I suggest to readers that if they can afford it, a subscription would be greatly appreciated. Patreon and Paypal make it easy to do.

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Tsveti Nacheva, supplied by author.

Being who I am, I was struck with the idea that Nacheva's novel wrestles with epistemological issues. That is to say, what is it that we do or do not really know about the world around us?

Laurie suffers from a lack of memory from the night when Ashley disappeared. She ascribes this to the fact that she was very drunk and she simply "blacked out". But she does have the odd strange dream. Moreover, once in a while she hallucinates things like blood dripping from her hands.

Moreover, in her relationships there is also a level of ambiguity. She is conflicted when she meets Nate again, she can't really tell if she wants to reconnect with him, or, if she is happy being involved with her rich, movie star beau who is on the other side of the continent filming a movie. 

When paparazzi catch this guy in the company of a cute young thing from his film shoot---and the photos get spread all over the web---he maintains that he is faithful to her and this is just the media being salacious. 

As a tv producer, Laurie is also not above "fudging the facts" if it creates an entertaining (and profitable) end result. She goes back to Solway to research a pretty lame story about a young child who says he has memories of a previous life as a young woman. This girl died under tragic circumstances in Solway at the time that Nate's grandfather was a town doctor. Through research in pursuit of creating some sort of "fig leaf" to justify a television show that supports the idea of reincarnation, she ends up pulling apart the "official court findings", and, unearths yet another hushed-up scandal. 

By the end of the novel the reader is left wondering what exactly happened anywhere. There are lots of objective facts that happen because the first-person narrative structure puts them in front of the reader. But there are also a lot of "facts" that get dug up on old newspaper microfilm, and, attested by people who are neither objective nor good witnesses. These lead to untested hypotheses, based on slim intuitions. And all the characters also seem to be prey to motivated reasoning: they need a good story to put on tv, to stay out of jail, and, to end up with the person you love.

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As I pointed out in the intro, the introspective novel was a creation of the late 19th century. So was the novel of ideas, which is what I am primarily more attracted to. But I'd say Fault Lines is an example that shows sometimes there isn't a hard and fast difference between the two. Modern psychology has shown our memories are a very weak reed to lean upon. It is far too easy to confuse imagination with remembering because the way the brain our processes them. In addition, it is a fact that the brain will suppress traumatic memories.

Where does that leave Laurie and the reader? This is a novel where there are a lot of stories. Some might be true, but a lot of them are obviously constructed by people because it makes life a little more convenient to remember things one way as opposed to another. Beyond that, what physical records we may have---be they old court documents, television documentaries, or, photos from paparazzi---are all constructed by people with their own particular agendas. 

Whatever reality we may objectively inhabit, it is mediated by the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Nacheva's novel reminds the reader of how much of our lives are just collections of stories. 

Not a bad message for an writer to convey. 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!