Voyageur novel leads readers up creek

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This article was published 03/02/2018 (3160 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Is it possible to enjoy a book without really liking it?

The newest comic novel by Montreal-based writer Phyllis Rudin, a sort of coming-of-age story about a Montreal millennial nebbish named Ben (more often called Benji), might serve as an example.

There is plenty to enjoy, beginning with the intriguing, promising title. Narrated by Ben, the novel tells of his growing obsession with the somewhat puny Hudson’s Bay’s artifact museum dedicated to the fur trade in the Montreal store — just before American investors move in for the kill.

Ben believes he is born out of time — that he should have been a voyageur.

The complications arise from there. Ben meets Morrie, an old, out-of-work furrier (who wants furs these days?) who is equally obsessed, and they scheme to steal an 18th-century canoe before the museum is closed and the items dispersed.

There are good cracks throughout; Benji has a Woody Allen-ish clever mouth and some sprinkling of wit.

The strong, truly comic start, however, is unfortunately only fitfully so after the premise of how and when Ben becomes taken with the collection is established.

The plot complications in which Benji’s lively widowed mother, his smart-aleck siblings, his reformed criminal friend and Morrie’s dying wife all play a part and are clever, but grow a touch tiresome as we are lead to a pseudo-mystical ending.

Superficially introduced earlier in the book is the idea of crossing into the spiritual world one has embraced in the present — for Ben, the life of the voyageur as he sees it. Morrie enters it, but something holds Ben back in this world.

Even if this idea was plunked down into contemporary Montreal, it might work if given more psychological, philosophical or spiritual basis, but it isn’t and seems hollow — as does Ben’s rejection of it, given that the whole push of the novel is toward his desire to be one with the world of the voyageur.

Despite these misgivings, what’s not to like? After all, the style is breezy and generally affectionate, the situations immediately recognizable (if off-beat) and the faults of the book don’t detract from our liking all the characters sharply etched by Rudin.

Yet something nags. The point of the book seems to be that Ben needs to grow up. Ben himself feels he never officially became a man due his disastrous bar mitzvah being interrupted. This idea is striking — and the relating of the disaster is hilarious — but nothing in the story shows Ben, even with his voyageur obsession, to be less mature than anyone else in the novel; in the book he may be told this, but we don’t see the proof.

Even his decision, made with Morrie, to steal a canoe could be regarded as an act against the cold corporate suits who would destroy history because it doesn’t bring profit.

Earlier in the novel, Ben relates a memory of the shock he felt seeing his father, now dead and reviled, kissing another woman.

His handling of this situation, given his teenage years, is moving and mature when it happened, it seems to the reader.

His decision to stay and journey through this life should be the moment of Ben’s maturity, the ceremony of becoming a man completed. Since we never see the immature Ben, what then does his decision mean? This is why something rings hollow.

The book persuades with its comedy, but leaves one skeptical about the author’s message, however pleasantly presented she has wrapped it.

Rory Runnells is a Winnipeg writer.