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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Literary novel's title, plot idea better than delivery

Reviewed by: Duncan McMonagle

Posted: 11/21/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Seal Intestine Raincoat

By Rosie Chard

NeWest Press, 251 pages, $20

THIS literary novel boasts a great title and a decent plot idea. The publisher delivers it in an elegant cover.

Too bad about the writing.

Edmonton's NeWest Press has done first-time novelist Rosie Chard, a recent British immigrant to Winnipeg, a serious disservice by thrusting this book into the world without decent editing.

The book is set "three years from now," although nothing in the plot or dialogue explains or even reflects this time shift.

A small family of English immigrants suffers through a nine-day winter blackout in an unfinished Winnipeg subdivision. Another family joins them. They suffer, too.

Both fathers depart early in the story and do not return, without explanation. Both mothers become mute. A precocious 15-year-old boy rescues them.

The novel devotes much energy pre-blackout to creating a relationship between the boy and a homeless Inuit man, who disappears after giving the boy the raincoat of the title. But neither the man nor the raincoat figures again in the plot.

A list in the epilogue catches the reader up with more than 40 characters from the first 75 pages who have disappeared like doomed souls trudging into a blizzard.

In this dystopian near-future, snowmobiles have apparently become extinct. But anyone who has lived through a Prairie winter, even in Edmonton, knows that's how we get around when winter storms block the city streets, even if gasoline is in short supply.

Seal Intestine Raincoat is a strong challenger for the dubious title of worst-written book set in Winnipeg -- in the 21st century, anyway.

Here is Chard describing a body: "Usually discreet areas of her face were springing into focus as the light glared upwards: the prickly ring of her nostrils, the underside of her chin studded with tiny hairs, the freckled underside of her brow."

Particularly jarring is the author's tin ear for Canadian dialogue. Two examples from imagined radio broadcasts: "the government are advising people not to leave their homes," and "attempts to re-establish power in the Prairies."

Chard also has an annoying predisposition for the passive voice, for example in a passage where our teenage hero misses the sound of trains. "The absence of that reassuring toot was deeply felt as Fred sat on the sofa."

Never mind the repeated misspelling of minuscule and the wrong title for Canada's national anthem.

This novel looks like an early draft that requires major surgery and an extended convalescence -- and then perhaps further surgery. That's what editing is for.

The publisher has squandered an opportunity to introduce a new author with a fresh view of the Prairies and perhaps a new take on the potentially life-saving value of traditional aboriginal crafts.

The only cause for relief in this bleak literary landscape is the declaration by NeWest, whose logo is a bison, that "No bison were harmed in the making of this book."

Duncan McMonagle teaches journalism at Red River College and writes the Information Tsunami blog at http://duncanmcm.blogspot.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 21, 2009 H9

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