Engaging story has hope for human nature

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This article was published 25/05/2013 (4854 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ON the last day of Christmas holidays, an 11-year-old boy in Montreal finds out his parents are splitting up.

Hurt and bewildered, he prays to the sky to help him. The next day an ice storm begins. The boy, his family and their neighbours find their lives permanently altered by the devastating ice storm of 1998.

This first book by French-born Montrealer Pierre Szalowski is a lighthearted novel with a touch of magic realism: the boy (who’s never named) believes he caused the storm, and his friend Alex eventually believes this, too.

First published in French in 2007, it’s now being released in English in Canada and the Anglophone Canadians will have the odd experience of reading a story, set in Canada, told in British-inflected English — for example, translator Alison Anderson, apparently an American, uses “face flannel” for washcloth, “mobile” for cellphone and “flatmate” for roommate.

The storm doesn’t seem to be helping the boy much at first. His parents still split up, his dad driving out of town to the family cottage. They make plans to divide up the furniture and share child custody, leaving the boy to feel as if he’s hardly worth more than a sofa.

For the neighbours, though, the bad weather has some surprisingly positive effects. When power goes off on one side of the street, Alex and his misanthropic father, Alexis, are taken in by their neighbours Simon and Michel, a gay couple who have kept their relationship quiet.

Alexis quickly learns their secret, but also finds that he’s aching to tell someone his own troubles. Having Simon listen to him has a marvellous effect on his temperament. And Simon, having thus disarmed his bigoted neighbour, feels he and Michel can be truthful about their relationship.

Meanwhile, Boris, the Russian PhD student across the street, is worried. If the heat goes off, his tank of tropical fish, on which his research depends, will be in danger. Simon and Michel’s neighbour, Julie, an exotic dancer, gives the fish a temporary home in her bathtub and soon grows fond of their owner despite — or because of — his complete lack of interest in her body.

The boy feels pretty low by this point. He asks the sky to stop raining ice because his own situation is only getting worse. Alex, however, isn’t at all pleased the storm has stopped. He’s happier than he’s ever been, and doesn’t want it to end. He gets downright nasty with the boy and makes him call on the sky again.

That’s when things begin looking up. The boy’s father, Martin, returns home, injured by a fall on the ice but also more alive and energetic than before. “Being frozen had changed him,” says the boy, and asks the sky to do the same for his mother.

When the power outage suddenly worsens, Martin and the neighbours go to help evacuate the seniors’ home. Here Szalowski’s comic touch gets a little heavy-handed.

This scene, in which Martin briskly takes charge and shows the hapless police sergeant how it’s done, feels like one of the more farcical moments in a heartwarming Disney movie.

It’s unfortunate, too, that the epilogue deflates the magic the author has built up, and ends on a clumsily sentimental note.

Otherwise, this is an engaging (if rather light) read, a story that makes some hopeful assertions about human nature: Tough situations can bring neighbours together. People can change. Happy endings are possible.

Joanne Epp is a Winnipeg writer.