Family ties are a matter of biography and not biology.The Party Wall is one of those books that works best if you go into it absolutely cold, with no idea what it might be about. As a result, I don't know what to say that wouldn't serve as a spoiler. I will say that, just by glancing at the book's table of contents, one will note that it is broken up into sections which focus on two characters each: three sets of the characters having two long chapters each, and one set of characters having seven interspersed short chapters. All together this does form one cohesive novel, although it does take a while to work out the timeline and the ways in which the various stories connect (one set of chapters is in a futuristic Canada with a Labour Party in power and a Saskatchewan made unrecognisable by climate change). I enjoyed the writing in this book very much, and insofar as the narrative is like a puzzle to solve, it was a rewarding read.
Angie is nine years old and as gnarled as a crone. She resembles the pine trees growing on mountaintops. The shape of her fingers and toes is complicated, and her elbows protrude from the middle of her spindly arms, two black pearls mounted on taut wires. She dreads the day her breasts will appear, convinced as she is that they will emerge, not like the pretty apples flaunted by the girls in junior high, but like two angular bumps, two angry fists pounding their way through her chest.The Party Wall examines families and how they are defined (and not incidentally, the three long-chaptered storylines each feature a nasty but beloved cat: Shabby, Wretch, and Bastard). We meet twins and siblings and widows and single mothers; soulmates and estrangements; petty revenge and karmic justice. Throughout, there is much made of twinning and dual natures:
The world is an unjust place where the good go bad from never being rewarded, where the truly wicked are very rarely punished and where most folk zigzag between the two extremes, neither saints nor demons, tacking between heartache and joy, their fingers crossed, knocking on wood. Every person split in two, each with a fault around which good and evil spin.There's really not much more I'd want to say for fear of spoiling this reading experience for someone. As I enjoyed the writing so much, I should acknowledge that author Catherine Leroux was ably translated into English by Lazer Lederhendler (but I was left wondering at strange typos like the marathoner and her “carrier in sports”). I'm delighted that The Party Wall is on the shortlist for the Giller Prize this year; it could definitely take it.
The 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist:
Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Andrew Battershill : Pillow
David Bergen : Stranger
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Kathy Page : The Two of Us
Susan Perly : Death Valley
Kerry Lee Powell : Willem De Kooning's Paintbrush
Steven Price : By Gaslight
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People
*Won by Madeleine Thien for Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Not really a surprise, but this is how I ranked the shortlist, entirely according to my own enjoyment level with the reading experience:
Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People
