Land Mammals and Sea Creatures

Everyone is already forgotten. She could relax. Even the mass extinction humans were creating, paring down the things worth remembering, trimming diversity into manicured homogeneity, running out of space while surrounded by an infinite vacuum, even this is forgotten as the galaxy moves to collide with its neighbour, as the stars accelerate out of eyeshot.

Land Mammals and Sea Creatures is certainly well written, but it's kind of like a needlepoint sampler; a bunch of showy scenes that display their creator's talents without really making one cohesive picture. There's so much good and interesting, creative and kinetic, in Jen Neale's writing here, but without making me care about any of her characters, and without making me engage in any kind of plot, I'm left wanting something more.

Twenty-five years after serving in the Gulf War, Marty Bird is still suffering the effects of untreated PTSD, and something tells his daughter that it's time to quit her job in Vancouver and head five hours up the coast to make sure her Dad doesn't do something rash. Not long after Julie settles back into her hometown, a strange woman sets up a campsite on the beach, and soon, animals start committing suicide around her: hawks divebomb into the rocks, a moose impales itself on a wrought iron fence, and a massive blue whale beaches itself right at the woman's feet.

The whale's blubber opened like a blossom. A bubble of exhumed insides appeared in the centre of the gash, its split mouth widening. The opening hissed. Blood emerged not as a liquid but as a mist. A spray of gas slapped Julie and painted her face. She scrambled back, shielded her eyes, the taste of aspirin and iron infecting her mouth. The whale's intestines crowned in the opening, then spooled out of its body, looped in the air. Snakes of it twisted and spun. The seagulls screamed louder. Whale guts slapped the beach in coils. The intestines piled out in impossible masses, blood and thick muck carving new paths in the sand, digging trenches of decay down to the lapping water. Julie's hands slid into the ditches. Tears flooded her eyes and she yelled for help.

It turns out this woman knew Marty many years ago (although he doesn't remember this), and not only does she seem to have appeared at this moment in order to give him permission to exit his life if it's no longer worth living, but she is also a Jerry Lee Lewis impersonator, here to excite a frenzy in the sleepy village of Port Braid.

Jennie Lee Lewis' head wove side to side like a horse bored in its stall. Her voice dipped and hovered in unexpected places and when the song was over, the people clapped hard. Marty nodded ferociously. Next, she sang “Great Balls of Fire”, which was the one Jerry Lee Lewis song that Julie remembered. Kids at her elementary school used to giggle scream the lyrics whenever they wanted to reassert to their peers that they, in fact, knew what balls were. JLL gave no hint of the comedy, though, and no one in the audience had so much as a smirk. JLL stopped playing the piano each time she sang the main line, then leapt back with her key-pounding. She lifted her foot onto the keys, stepping down and releasing a crush of sound.

Naturally, Julie doesn't want this piano-playing death whisperer influencing her fragile father, but something about her presence allows Marty to share with his daughter all the personal stories that he had held back from her over the years. And something about having this JLL around (gosh, how I hate that name) brings Marty something like peace.

Speaking with JLL about death these last weeks had made him hopeful. Like some people desired sports cars or country villas, he desired to die. For his heart to stop seizing. For his blood to settle in his veins. For his synapses to stop shrieking. To be still and permanent, trustworthy and even. Death was shiny and smooth. A warm and still lake.

This book is crammed with well-written and fascinating scenes, and I believed Neale's portrayal of Marty's PTSD, but as interesting as the device is, I don't understand the suicidal animals – or the point of the orgy-and-riot-inducing Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation. Julie is presumably the foil meant to react to the odd goings on, but her actions and reactions weren't identifiable to me, either. Swing and a miss for me.

2018 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalists 

• Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage.
• Dear Evelyn by Kathy Page.
• Land Mammals and Sea Creatures by Jen Neale.
• The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson.
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyen.

*Won by Dear Evelyn