![]() ![]() This young man, who says things like “good gravy” and cries over his dying dog, has to define himself. It follows Jared, a 16-year-old living in his mother’s basement, who has to navigate shifting mysteries within and without as the world he thought he knew turns into something he doesn’t know at all.ĭealing with more than just the typical teenage escapades with booze, drugs, sex, and fickle social circles, Jared’s world of domestic dysfunction teeters between extremes of tenderness and violence. The story takes place in Kitimat, 10 kilometres north of Kitimaat Village, where Robinson spent her own youth. But that seems to be part of Robinson’s point, as she explores simultaneity and the opportunities that come when you have to face it. For in this book, the seemingly normal and the magical inhabit the same space. Like the reader, Jared has a lot of learning to do. As a small child, his maternal grandmother called him Wee’git-“Trickster”-and told him: “You still smell like lightning.” While she’d treat his cousins to fudge and caramel apples, for his birthday she gave Jared a jar of blood and animals’ teeth. ![]() ON THE OPENING PAGE of Eden Robinson’s new novel Son of a Trickster (Knopf, February 2017), we learn that Jared is different. A coming-of-age story invites us to step out of the comfortable. ![]()
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