Arborescent

March 1, 2021
A whimsical triptych of stories about Canadian outcasts in the midst of very personal transformations. Where to start with this inspired take on magical realism? Maybe it's location, as the primary characters are all denizens of Cambrian Court, an apartment complex in an unnamed Canadian metropolis, but the action is largely confined to their inner worlds. No lie--it's pretty weird, but debut novelist Lynch, a first-generation French Chinese immigrant living in Calgary, demonstrates a phenomenal command of language. Here's one character at rest, finally: "The undersides of his eyelids felt like the end of the world. Like legitimacy." There isn't exactly a plot; it's mostly the exploits of three searchers looking for enlightenment and finding it in strange ways. Nohlan Buckles, whose father is introduced in a superfluous intro, is an unsatisfied young man on the verge of blindness who is...turning into a tree. "We're finding it increasingly difficult to be reasonable, so I'm becoming a tree," says Nohlan, whose fate seems better than clerking at the dying cybercafe where he works. "A tree is always an answer, because it is a beginning. I think." Hachiko Yoshimoto works in the theater, performing the art of Kabuki, but finds herself possessed by the spirit of Oiwa, the spirit she knows as "the ghost of life," a role she continues to inhabit even when bad things happen. Psychic Celine, a strange but prescient neighbor of Nohlan's, tries to help, but it seems that everybody is fated for strange paths, despite resistance. There's Nohlan, spitting branches and growing leaves, who accepts his destiny. You'll have to reach the end to find out Hachi's fate, but it's as unusual as Nohlan's. Lastly, there's Zadie Chan, suffering under the twin pressures of her mother's dominance and figuring out her own sexuality, who eventually finds she contains multitudes, quite literally. With shades of Rivka Galchen and Charles Yu, this debut has hints of greater things to come.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.