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Page-turner destined for made-for-TV movie

Rabble-rousing woman battles foe 'Big Al'

Reviewed by: Adelia Neufeld Wiens

Posted: 12/11/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Island Girl

By Lynda Simmons

Berkley Books, 435 pages, $18.50

"Big Al" invades Ruby's life, uninvited. The 55-year-old hairdresser takes up battle with him by obsessively jotting to-do lists in her red notebook and blogging about his existence.

Ruby's combat with Big Al is intense and secret.

This is Toronto author Simmons' second novel. The first, Getting Rid of Rosie, came out in 2009. Set in Muskoka, it featured a quirky love story whose main character is plagued by a ghost.

Simmons' second outing is darker, not so quirky, but also entertaining. Like Jodi Piccoult, Simmons uses different characters to relate the story. The result is an engaging book about mental acuity as well as incapability, and emotional strength as well as frailty.

Big Al is, of course, Alzheimer's disease. Ruby is a Toronto Island matriarch who prides herself as being one of the Donaldson clan of women whose confrontations over island development have made them legendary rabble-rousers.

So, what we have here is not so much another novel featuring Alzheimer's disease -- it is not a reworking of Lisa Genova's recent American bestseller Still Alice -- as the thickly plotted story of a mother who tries to clean up the messes in her life. She thinks she's doing this so that her family can keep their house and continue the Donaldson legacy.

But this simple aim of tidying things up is not easily done. Ruby has a wounded family that needs desperately to find a way to forgiveness and hope. Their wounds are deep and festering.

Liz is Ruby's estranged daughter who has abandoned her law practice and taken to drink. Liz is summoned to "make nice" with her mother. Her response? "I hate the way people think Alzheimer's grants a person immunity. A kind of moral 'get out of jail free' card, relieving them of all responsibility for the mess they've created." Liz hates her mother for some pretty good reasons.

Grace is Ruby's other daughter. She is a 30-year-old with a 10-year-old's brain who lives a sheltered life with Ruby. The tragedy in Grace's life is a central part of this novel, and is linked to her sister's alcoholism. But to say more would spoil the story.

Suffice it to say that Grace's character is delightful, even in her encounter with frightening loss. She nurses back to health a wounded female mockingbird, an act that serves as a powerful metaphor in this story without becoming sentimental shlock.

Mark is Ruby's ally, a successful Toronto lawyer who had been part of Ruby's life many years earlier.

Ruby seeks him out, after years of ignoring him, when she is desperate to find the estranged Liz. His determination to rally round and help Ruby cope may be slightly unbelievable, but his loyalty and tenderness is heartwarming.

With a cast of characters and subplots, Simmons deftly weaves marathon canoeing, lawsuits, birdwatching and hairdressing into the story.

Ruby is feisty, opinionated and stubborn. As she becomes more affected by the unrelenting Big Al, she learns to lean, just a little, on others. But she remains a rabble-rousing woman, with foibles.

The setting of all this drama is the very real and remarkable Toronto Island, a quiet community located just a 10-minute ferry ride from downtown Toronto.

While at times, Island Girl seems to be headed for the world of made-for-TV movies, this is a page-turner that will both satisfy and enchant its readers.

Adelia Neufeld Wiens is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 11, 2010 H9

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