Spells
by RM Vaughan
ECW Press, 2003
Reviewed by Aidan Baker
To date, my experiences of and in New Brunswick have led me to conclude
that
it is a pretty miserable province. Where else, for example, can you buy
poutine in a can? Where else does a by-law requiring secondary exits in
event of a fire result in houses adorned with doors lead only to open air,
the supposed-to-be accompanying decks only partially, if at all, built?
Now before some proud NBer leaps to his/her home province's defence in
light
of this blatant provincial snobbery: It would seem RM Vaughan shares my
low
opinion of New Brunswick. Vaughan's second novel, Spells, set in New
Brunswick in the late 1970s, is peopled with miserable, bigoted,
willfully-ignorant individuals who live in miserable, stunted,
culture-deprived towns. The main character, teen-aged Andy, is
Fat but dainty, motherless, a hobbyist with suspect
interests who was afraid of dogs and Ski-Doos; pissy
smelling...Andy kept Doline Street from sinking into
the abject trashiness it richly deserved- because no
matter how desparate or abused or just plain poor and
ugly one became, one was at least not Andy. (p28)
Andy's best and only friend, for a while, is
a freakishly compact, low-slung, stub-legged,
fifteen-year-old girl named Stacey Grombell, a girl
who frosted her wire hair monthly and was almost
pregnant four times before she earned her drivers
licence. (p28)
Andy and Stacey meet in the men's washroom of a local restaurant as Stacey
attempts to fish her shoes out of a vomit-filled toilet.
Such descriptions no doubt suggest that Spells is a miserable and
depressing
book and, to a certain extent, it is. But that misery and depression is
leavened by humour (admittedly a fairly morbid and nasty humour) and the
sort of touchingly pathetic nature of Andy and Stacey's relationship:
"Stacey didn't know anybody who really loved anybody else. People were
either easy to get along with or not, and you stuck with the ones you got
along with. Like Andy" (p101). These are two desperate kids in a desperate place seeking solace and refuge in each other.
Besides their desparation, Andy and Stacey also share the 'gift' --
extra-sensory powers, the ability to cast (and make work) spells, to
perform
magic. The notion of magic powers may seem a stark juxtaposition to the
gritty realism of above-described material, but Vaughan handles that
juxtaposition quite well, seldom giving the magical elements too much
credence or over-describing fantastical events. When something fantastical
does happen, it certainly seems weird and creepy, but also entirely
plausible in the fictional reality Vaughan has established. Even when Andy
conjures Nekhbet, the vulture Goddess of Upper Egypt, to be his personal
protector, it seems almost, well, logical.
It may seem that Spells is trying to be many things. It is: coming of age
story, mythical fantasy, gothic romance -- I haven't even mentioned the
coming out of the closet part or the Tutankhamen-mania and this review is
already getting long. For the most part, these disparate elements are
well-combined to create an intriguing and entertaining read, although I
did
find Stacey and Andy's relationship more interesting than Andy's infatuation and sexual encounter with his father's friend, Dan (the coming out of the
closet part). The Tutankhamen-mania seems a plausible obsession for Andy,
and his desire to visit the King Tut exhibit in Toronto, but the cell of
mystic terrorists devoted to destroying the violators of Tutankhamen's
eternal resting place seems excessive.
The novel would have worked just as
well, if not better, without this plotline. Even if the idea of mystical
terrorism is intriguing, there are only so many plotlines a 200 page novel
can realistically contain. This may have been Vaughan's attempt to shift
the
focus away from New Brunswick but perhaps Andy outside of his home
province
is less interesting or deserving of our pity.
Aidan Baker is a
Toronto-based writer and musician who has published internationally in
such magazines as Intangible, Stanzas and The Columbia
Review.
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