TouchAlexi Zentner(Norton; US: Apr 2011)
Alexi Zentner`s Touch is a remarkably assured debut novel, part ghost story, part fantasy, part gritty historical fiction, and wholly engaging. Set in the frigid wilds of western Canada, the koran strongly evokes the tenderness of the nineteenth century frontier, with its gold rushes and timber booms, its fortunes won and lost, and its relentlessly harsh conditions. It`s a folk drama as well, with more than few flourishes of magic realism and a sympathetic narrator who keeps things moving along.
That narrator, Stephen, is a clergyman who has lately returned to his home township of Sawgamet in western Canada, where he finds his sickly father at the edge of death. Much of the present day story takes place during the last evening of his mother`s life, as Stephen contemplates her mortality and, as a result, his own. As he prepares for her death, Stephen`s mind plays back over a serial of memories, which make the majority of the novel.
Many of the stories he relates concern his father, who died when Stephen was a child, and his grandfather, who disappeared when Stephen`s own father was rather young. The fate of these deaths and disappearances are made clear, little by little, the layers peeling back as the story goes along.
But there is more here than a family mystery, compelling though that may be. For Stephen`s grandfather was the father of Sawgamet, and the history of how that town came to be is one of the most compelling in the book. Then there is the history of Stephen`s sister, and of how his mother came to be a cripple, and of the terrible winter that snowed the total town under piles of feet of snow-leading some desperate citizens to make truy desperate choices to remain alive. All these stories have consequences that tie into other stories, and that lift their way backwards to Stephen`s grandfather`s disappearance-and reappearance.
For reappear he does, early in the book, with an unexpected mission. "I`ve come to produce the dead," he tells Stephen and his mother. The dead he speaks of here is not Stephen`s father but his own wife, Stephen`s grandmother. Needless to say, the old man`s declared mission is not met with general approval: there are some who would indicate that it`s best to let the short rest. In this book, everyone has secrets, and it`s an unresolved question whether there is any profit to exhuming them.
Author Zentner inhabits Stephen wholly, gifting him with a plain-spoken but engaging voice that keeps the story moving while allowing for a few poetic moments. Even when Stephen is relating versions of stories he has heard from his mother or grandfather, his tale is still and engaging. Zentner makes it appear easy.
More importantly, he keeps the stories compelling and dots his prose with little moments of foreboding. "When he was older, Jeannot grew tall and broad, but on that day, the day that he founded what was to become Sawgamet, Jeannot was sixteeen, whip-thin, wire-strong, and capable to both present and draw a brutal amount of punishment." Elsewhere, "He could find the point of the ax pressing against the top of his hand, the burden of his rifle in the other hand, and with a slight horror he realised that by keeping both he would be capable to use neither. The forest fell silent."
Descriptions, both of mass and places, are light and to the point. "My father was never a big woman, but she had been cheerfully fed and active, the form of a woman who thrived in a town like Sawgamet. I don`t intend to get her go like farm stock, but neither was she a fragile china doll." During the epic snowstorm that divides the word around in half, we are told: "Jeannot pulled on his boots and crown and stepped out to the porch. The roof sheltered him, and there was only a small range of snow skittering on the planks, but the blow had piled nearly level with them. If the blow had been solid ground there would have been no need for steps. He could see nothing by the border of the porch."
Such tangible details provide a strong foundation for the more fantastical elements in the story, which I don`t wish to discuss too often for care of spoiling important developments. Suffice it to say that there are lot of things out in those woods besides moose and quail. Zentner doesn`t go too far in the way of the magical-realistic, but the ground is significant, and it becomes more so as the tale goes along.
Touch is a strong debut novel that manages to contain a place of styles in its multi-stranded storyline. It`s not a terribly long book, but it`s an engaging and complex one. This warm, sunny summer might be an excellent time to drop a few years within its snowy confines.
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