A rousing chorus

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This article was published 19/08/2023 (1164 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The residents of Crow Valley are connected to each other, as usual in a small town, in positive and negative ways. In Crow Valley, they are also connected to Dale Jepson — prison guard, local hero and, before his tragic death in a fire last year, a national karaoke champion.

Calgary writer Ali Bryan’s excellent new novel, one of two (with Coq) to be published this year, mixes and mingles the characters and their complicated, thickening plots in ways both thought-provoking and hilarious. Bryan has written several other books, as well as articles and short stories. Her second novel, The Figgs, was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.

Roxanne was married to Dale. Val, another prison guard, is married to Brett, Dale’s best friend who could never quite attain Dale’s stature in the community. Molly, married to a local policeman, is “tired of being a mother.” Marcel is an inmate in the prison’s psychiatric wing.

Unable to move on from Dale’s death, Roxanne keeps his memory — and ashes — close, fantasizing about his reactions to whatever happens, and is one of the judges of the titular karaoke competition.

Val’s fantasizes about her next drink, even after 40 days sober, provide pitiable but funny insights into alcoholic cravings. She also cannot get over Brett’s infidelity, years before.

Molly’s maternal disillusionment begins the chain of events which will allow Marcel to escape from prison; his skewed perspectives on events are not the only ones which skirt pathos and humour in this engaging novel.

Taking place over the course of a day, each chapter of The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships is narrated from the perspective of one of the principal characters. But many other citizens of Crow Valley also figure into the afternoon and evening of the Crow Valley Karaoke Championship, whose winner will automatically be entered in the national championship, since Dale won last year.

Kabir is defined by his reputation as a firefighter and is always ready to save someone or something. The mayor’s wife is singing, too, and her song may be a threat to Roxanne, who works for the city.

The various children of Roxanne, Molly and Val and Brett are also pivotal characters. Everyone in Crow Valley is interesting and their interactions provide a pleasant view of a small town with real people, all with stories to tell.

Bryan allows the characters space to reveal the depth and specifics of their relationships. Molly’s husband, Gary, is from Newfoundland, and his accurately depicted accent and idioms can be as startling to the reader as they are to his neighbours. “Sounds a bit like an Irishman but without a mouth or an alphabet,” Val tells another guard about Gary. “What you’d expect from a place with its own time zone.”

Bryan’s clever turns of phrase describing places and situations often surprise and delight. Marcel’s cell block “smelled permanently of mildew and mental illness.” A bobblehead Princess Leia had been a Secret Santa when Brett and Val’s marriage was “still a holiday of coloured lights and warmth.”

Townspeople who just heard about an escaped murderer sat and contemplated “how they got so fat or why they got married, or what took them so long to discover online grocery shopping, or their own mediocrity.”

The singing in the Championship is almost incidental to the connections, and the journeys of the people in Crow Valley this one day. As in real life, it’s the people, not the competition, that really matter.

Bill Rambo is a retired teacher, who is intimidated about trying karaoke, because both his sons are professional vocalists.