Robinson continues success with first novel

Page 22

Monkey Beach

By Eden Robinson

384 pages (hc), $32.95

Knopf Canada

Eden Robinson's literary career is certainly off to a running start. Her first book, Traplines, a collection of stories published in 1996, received the Winifred Holtby Prize for the best first work of fiction in the Commonwealth, and was selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice and Notable Book of the Year. She followed it up this year with "Monkey Beach," her first novel, garnering nominations for both the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award.

The novel takes its title from a stretch of beach where narrator Lisa Hill begins and ends her journey. As the story begins, Lisa is with her parents, waiting for news of her younger brother, Jimmy, whose boat has been lost at sea. The novel alternates between present and past, as Lisa shares with us memories-moments plucked from her life-that lead up to the morning after the coast guard called with the news. The first memory Lisa shares, and one of the last as well, takes place with Jimmy on Monkey Beach.

The summer had stretched itself into early September. When we finally arrived, the day was sweltering. I loved going to Monkey Beach, because you couldn't take a step without crushing seashells, the crunch of your steps was loud and satisfying. The water was so pure that you could see straight down to the bottom. You could watch crabs skittering sideways over discarded clam and cockleshells, and shiners flicking back and forth.

Kelp the color of brown beer bottles rose from the bottom, tall and thin with bulbs on top, each bulb with long strands growing out of it, as flat as noodles, waving in the tide.

Many of Lisa's memories are happy ones, recalling times spent with family-learning traditional ways from her grandmother, hunting for the best Christmas tree with her uncle, or watching as her brother joyously swims in the ocean with a pod of killer whales. But other memories are painful, forcing Lisa to continually try to come to grips with the deaths of many of the people closest to her. She has a particularly hard time dealing with these deaths because of what her grandmother called "her gift."

Throughout her life, Lisa has had premonitions-in the form of visions, dreams, or visits from a little man with bright red hair, whose appearance always meant something was about to happen. Each time someone close to her died, Lisa's sorrow and feelings of loss were intermixed with guilt. Each time she felt she could have prevented the deaths if only she'd acted upon her premonitions. Her search for her brother brings her back to Monkey Beach once again, where she has a chance to finally put the ghosts haunting her to rest.

The book is wonderfully written, with interesting, realistic characters that become fuller and more rounded with every new memory, every turn of the page. The spaces in between past memories and present events, Robinson fills with rich, descriptive paragraphs, providing geography lessons, sharing myths, exposing Lisa's thoughts, or giving us a closer look at her premonitory dreams.

A sea otter dives. Long streams of sunlight wash through kelp trees, undulating like lazy belly dancers. A purple sea urchin creeps towards a kelp trunk. The otter dips, snatches up the urchin, carries it to the surface, where the sound of the waves breaking on the nearby shore is a bitter grumble. Devouring the urchin's soft underbelly in neat nibbles, the otter twirls in the surf, then dives again. The urchin's shell parachutes to the ocean bottom, landing in the dark, drifting hair of a corpse.

Despite the constant changes between past and present, and the descriptive bits of story in between, Robinson manages to maintain an even flow throughout the novel. And even though many of the things experienced by Lisa are overwhelmingly dark, there are just as many moments of happiness, and of hope. Much like life. And we, as readers, are invited to share all of it.