Re-creation Myths

Recent novels by Ian Williams and André Alexis challenge the veneer of multiculturalism in Canadian storytelling.

- Tajja Isen

Early on in Ian Williams’s Re-production, readers are treated to one of the novel’s many sex talks. The conversation, though, looks nothing like the classic childhood chat.

I don’t want to get pregnant.

Then don’t.

That’s the extent of the wisdom Edgar, the middle-aged heir of a moneyed German family, offers to Felicia, a teenage girl from an undisclosed Caribbean island. The two meet in the 1970s in a Toronto hospital room where both of their mothers lie near death. Edgar’s “Mutter” pulls through; Felicia’s doesn’t.

Felicia, alone and adrift in a new country, moves in with Edgar to act as his mother’s caretaker. As the weeks pass, their arrangement slides into a volatile intimacy. The earlier sex talk notwithstanding, Felicia gets pregnant and, knowing their relationship is unhealthy, leaves to raise the child alone. She names her son Armistice — Army for short — after a word Edgar hurled in vain in the leadup to her departure.

The story then follows mother and son over the decades as they make a life together in Brampton, Ontario, attracting errant connections that form into a chosen family. The growing circle includes Oliver, their lonely divorced landlord, and his precocious teenage daughter, Heather. Edgar keeps trying to worm his way back into Felicia’s life while she is at pains to keep his identity a secret from her son. All Army knows about his patrilineal roots is something Felicia once let slip during his ceaseless questioning — that his absent father is extremely wealthy. It’s a detail that proves seductive, and from his teen years onward, Army is devoted to his goal of getting rich quick.