Surely it is a failure of our human design that it takes not an hour, not a day, but much, much longer to relay what flashes through the mind with the speed of a hummingbird's wing.Jonathon Lewis-Adey was raised in a loving home in Toronto by his biological mother -- an aristocratic, British-born writer of some renown -- and her live-in girlfriend, Sid. It was the affectionate Sid who primarily tended to the boy while India worked on her latest novel, so it was upsetting to Jonathon when his two Moms started fighting, and devastating when Sid disappeared from his life without a trace when he was nine. As an adult, after some success as a writer himself, Jonathon tracked Sid down to where she had returned to her homeland of Trinidad and was shocked to discover that his erstwhile Mom's loving eyes were now set in the face of a stooped and aged man known as Sydney.
Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, besides being a totally evocative phrase, is the perfect title for this novel. Jonathon periodically visits Sydney for nine years after their initial reunion, always trying to discover the same whys -- why did Sid drop out of his life and why did she then become a he -- but although they spend long hours talking on a seaside veranda, Sydney always reverts (crablike) to the same two themes: his longterm friendship with Zain -- a Muslim girl he met when they attended the same girls' school together as teenagers -- and a snowy walk he once made to the Irene Samuel Health and Gender Centre in Toronto. Just as Jonathon hears these two stories over and over, sometimes with extra information added, the reader also repeatedly hears them with the same frustration: they don't really answer the whys.
Sydney and I stared at each other. Then, as if he knew my mind, he said, perhaps Jonathon, you've been looking for simple explanations. But there is hardly ever a single answer to anything. And isn't it so that the stories one most needs to know are the ones that are usually least simple or straightforward?Eventually, Jonathon receives the call he's been dreading: Sydney's health is failing and he would like his son by his side. When Jonathon arrives in Trinidad this time, Sydney expands on his stories, and once Jonathon gains access to Sydney's journals and Zain's letters, he begins to understand, and is able to process this understanding by using Sydney's stories as fodder in his own writing.
Sydney spoke in a soft voice, calculating his words. Contradictions are inevitable, he continued. You listening to my story is yet another angle; my story is incomplete, you see, Jonathon, without your interpretation -- over which I have little control.
In Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, Shani Mootoo has created a fascinating character with Siddhani/Sydney: as a closeted gay teenager in conservative Trinidad, she was conflicted about refusing to conform and also not wanting to be seen as different. She thought it would be freeing to emigrate to Canada -- where she could pursue her painting out from under the yoke of her family's expectations -- but soon realised that it's not just the Toronto winters that are cold: she had somehow traded a loving and tight-knit community of family and friends for a lonely and anonymous existence in a place where she doesn't even know the names of her neighbours. There is much lovely writing about both the snows of Toronto and the sunsets of Trinidad (though there is much more affection in the sections about the people and setting of Trinidad), and I was very interested in following along on Jonathon's journey of discovery, but there was just something missing in this book.
It might be because I wasn't really satisfied with the whys (and this is spoilery): Even if I believed that Sid could have left Jonathon without a good-bye or later visits because India insisted on it (and Sid knew the parting would be too hard), it would have been so much easier for Sydney to be the one to make contact with the grown Jonathon. And as for the why of the gender change: I can understand "man trapped in a woman's body", but that's not what Sid/Sydney ever says -- it's more like "I like wearing men's clothes so people don't think my mannerisms are weird and my breasts ruin the line of a dress shirt". I'm open to transgender storylines but this just left me confused; I think Mootoo could have served Sydney better by eventually crabwalking him toward explanations that would promote understanding. And Jonathon was just too wishy-washy: he refused to ever come right out and ask Sydney for answers and seemed to be perpetually stuck in the mindset of an abandoned nine-year-old.
Overall, this Giller Prize finalist was an intriguing concept with some vivid imagery that didn't quite work for me.
Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab sure seems like a Canadian prize winner: not just the immigrant experience, but the transgendered immigrant experience. This is not my favourite Canadian book of the year so far (but, then again, my favourites didn't make this longlist...) so this looks like a politically correct choice. Time -- and the rest of the longlist -- will tell.
*****
(Of this longlist the Giller Prize jury wrote, “We’re celebrating writers brave enough to change public discourse, generous with their empathy, offering deeply immersive experiences. Some delve into the sack of memory and retrieve the wisdom we need for our times, others turn the unfamiliar beloved. All are literary achievements we feel will touch and even transform you.” So I take that as a bit of a warning...)
The longlist for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize (with my personal ranking):
The 2014 Giller Prize winner is Us Conductors
