Endearing, estranged siblings struggle to connect

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This article was published 07/12/2019 (2436 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In her second novel, Manitoba author Lauren Carter explores the emotional aftermath left in the wake of a double murder.

Set in 1994, with the Rwandan genocide often mentioned and playing on TV in the background, This Has Nothing to Do With You follows Melony (Mel) Barnett, a young 20-something living in the fictional town of Hixon River, Ont. She works at the library, volunteers at an animal shelter and lives in an apartment building across a back alley from the house where her brother Matt lives with his wife and young daughter.

As the novel begins, Mel decides to adopt a dog from the shelter, a large and ill-behaved mastiff who was abused and for whom it is proving difficult to find an adoptive home. Though her apartment does not allow pets and she doesn’t fully acknowledge what will really be required to care for the dog, she takes him home — and much chaos ensues.

The dog destroys her apartment, bites her friend’s husband and gets her threatened with eviction. When she turns to her brother for help, she’s met with little more than an eyeroll and an assertion that this is yet another in her long list of bad decisions and lack of responsibility. This shows the reader the real focus of the novel: the rift between Mel and her brother Matt.

The year Mel graduated from high school, only three years earlier, her mother murdered her father and his mistress. After pleading guilty, her mother was sent to prison, and Mel has not seen or spoken to her since.

In the years since the murder and the present setting of the novel, Mel left her brother behind and lived off friends, ventured off with New Age pals and even had a brief stint of homelessness.

The full details of her years away, as well as more information about the murders, is filled in at length through flashbacks, while the forward momentum of the narrative concerns Mel struggling to find a way to care for her new dog as well as repair the damage in her and Matt’s relationship.

The press material refers to the book as a “literary crime novel,” which is a slight misnomer. While there is indeed a crime involved in the plot — a double murder, no less — novel’s focus is not on the crime, but rather the effects on the surviving family members. Mel and Matt experience differing but extreme forms of trauma, and their inability to communicate seems to stem from not fully understanding the suffering endured by the other sibling.

Setting much of the novel in 1994 at the beginning of the Rwandan genocide provides a number of timely parallels to our own historical moment, as we watch chaos unfold in other countries and feel powerless to enact any kind of agency against such catastrophic forces.

That said, most of the novel does take place in the flashbacks, which reveal the details of what Mel, Matt and the other characters have lived through since the murders. For a generic crime novel, this would be an odd choice, but it works well as a more realist, CanLit character study.

Carter’s characters are endearing and enduring creations. Their decisions are sometimes frustrating, much like real people, but their emotions and the consequences they suffer create a powerful connection with the reader.

Those looking for a murder mystery or a more straightforward crime novel won’t really get it here, but readers will certainly enjoy a well-crafted and thoughtful novel about how a family seeks to repair itself after a traumatic event.

Keith Cadieux is a Winnipeg writer and editor.