“The most powerful flower of all, the rarest, most dangerous plant ever studied, was this first flower that I’m telling you about. Two of its petals rise like wings whenever night falls. It is the most dangerous because it makes whoever finds it unimaginably strong. It takes away fear. If you can find the flower, you can do anything you want.”
“What’s it called?” asked Oliver, with his eyes closed.
“The Black Dove,” said his dad.
I felt compellingly wrongfooted throughout Black Dove: Particularly early on, I rarely understood what was meant to be actually happening to the characters and what was in-novel storytelling — but every time I lost my footing, author Colin McAdam presented a fingerhold with just enough meaning for me to grasp and carry on. Focussed primarily on a sad twelve-year-old boy (and his well-meaning writer father), this is no Early Reader coming-of-age novel: With monsters and bullies and abusive parents, the storyline can be bloody and gruesome. But still, the uncertainty and danger and sadness of this narrative perfectly captures something of what it is to be twelve; what it is to be the parent of a sad twelve-year-old boy, trying (maybe not successfully) to prove you understand him; that you remember what it’s like to stand at that cliffedge. The language is vivid and slightly off somehow (but compellingly so; I needed to make meaning), the plot is fantastical but rooted in the muck of our own world, and the characters are like to break one’s heart: What more could a reader possibly ask for? I went into this not knowing anything about the plot and I’d urge other readers to do the same with the assurance that it all comes together in the end. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
His father spent the morning writing. Half-built scenes and old yearnings. A sense of fear creeping in more these days. Paying the bills, the world moving on from the aesthetic he was raised in, organs quietly aging. Still such a fire in him, but burning on what. He wrote every day the way kids sing in the dark to keep their fears quiet. It’s not real singing.
Oliver’s mother had been a mean drunk, and after she left, it was just him and his Dad living alone “in a tall and narrow old house on a stained and busy street” (I did love all of the recognisably Toronto references). When Oliver’s father’s writing was going well, he rarely acknowledged what was going on outside his study, so he failed to notice when his son — younger and smaller than the other boys in his class after skipping a grade, wearing uncool clothing, and bearing the shame of his mother’s reputation — had become the target of school bullies. Running from these boys one afternoon, Oliver ducked into a shabby-looking bric-a-brac shop and met its curious proprietor: Allele Princeps, survivor of a tragic childhood and current mad scientist attempting to create, essentially, an unhurtable human:
And when you walk through gardens that get heavier, swollen and corrupt, when flies walk over eyelids and the fruit starts dripping its own wine, when the mould sets in and you move to drier edges, getting pushed now at your backs to where the grass has burned and dust gets into lungs, jackals and a soldiery of vultures will stir and chatter, hybrid beasts will thrive beneath a viral sky and he will be watching, crouching, staring with the wisdom of a widow, the perfect boy.
I’m going to put my next comments behind a spoiler warning (because I really don’t want to spoil anything). ** Like I wrote above, I was so wrongfooted from the start: We understand that Oliver’s dad often tells him a bedtime story — the story of the “Black Dove” is obviously meant as a metaphor for their situation but he also tries out plots from his writing on the boy — but I was never certain what was meant to be happening, and what was from the dad’s writing. When I first read about Amon — the boy who can kill with a touch — I assumed that wasn’t meant to be “reality”, until it was (until it wasn’t), and I did like that uncertainty; what’s more uncertain than being twelve and thinking you understand how the world works and the world keeps proving you wrong? Oliver’s body changing from Principe’s gene-editing is, I suppose, plausible, (but even in the moment it read as comic book wish fulfilment; which is credible for the character). But what I didn’t find acceptable was the slate of unfleshed/absent female characters: Both Oliver’s and Principe’s mothers were cruelly abusive (which makes sense if Principe is an avatar of Oliver in his father’s story), the bullies make their fathers into characters by talking about them (the mothers are barely mentioned), the female gym teacher is a flake, but worst of all is poor Suzi: treated like Bella out of Twilight or something, she’s frightened and faintly disgusted by Oliver when they first meet but his electric touch makes her overcome her hesitation and be the understanding nonmutant who can’t help but stand by her inhuman man. The “romance” between the pair is absolutely appropriate for a pair of twelve-year-olds, but I did not like her position in the relationship and it highlighted for me just how secondary the female characters were to the story. However, I did ultimately appreciate how McAdam tied up all the stories-within-a-story, writer-using-the-tools-he-has-to-save-his-sad-son. ** In the end we learn the hard lesson: Sometimes you will be sad and need to learn to work your way through it; maybe stories can help with that.
We are animals and we will die, and in the journey of each animal is some small triumph or a path surprising and if all we can do is celebrate and sing our struggles in the dust, our fights and wants and eyes so pretty they cannot simply be eyes, then that will be music enough.
I do hope I’ve given enough of the flavour of the vivid and off-kilter writing here: McAdam has a strong and unique voice, and he uses it compellingly to say something important. And now I want to go out and find his backlist.
