She’s long, tall, elastic.”īut what Help Me… also has is wry humour, and a remarkable narrator in Hazel, who is blessed with remarkable powers of perception. Two sentences stuck together like these ones: “My mother is physically fantastic. Rhythm, cadence, alliteration, precise imagery and perfect word choice.
A little bit like Emma Richler’s Sister Crazy, but not quite as leaden in the end, and with a dash of the spirit of Adrian Mole, what Help Me… has in common with The Outlander is prose constructed with a poet’s deft hand, attention to each sentence, and the paragraphs. And though episodic, these stories do come together to create a narrative arc that would satisfy a reader with a craving for a novel. While The Outlander was not quite my cup of tea, I delighted in this story collection.Įssential to note, however, that Help Me, Jacques Cousteau is a linked story collection, which follows a character called Hazel from young childhood into her late teen years.
Somehow, I just don’t see Nicholas Campbell getting behind this one, but the very good news is that I can. Which is kind of strange, actually, seeing as Help Me, Jacques Cousteau has little in common with The Outlander- they’re siblings a decade apart, after all. Paperback, 400pp.On the back of Gil Adamson’s success with The Outlander (a popular novel even before it became a serious contender for Canada Reads 2009), House of Anansi has republished her first work of fiction, Help Me, Jacques Cousteau (published in 2000 by The Porcupine’s Quill). A haunting adventure story with all the suspense and high drama of a John Ford film, full of unexpected twists. Others like the Reverend Bonnycastle offer support only to reveal that they too have their own demons raging inside. Along the way the steely outlaw encounters a changing cast of misfits and eccentrics like the recluse known as The Ridgerunner who provide a brief respite from her solitude. As she plunges further and further away from civilisation her path from retribution to redemption slowly unfurls. She has murdered their brother and their cold lust for vengeance is unswerving. Two red-headed brothers, rifles across their backs, lurch close behind her, monstrous figures, identical in every way with the predatory look of hyenas. Desperate, her nerves burning, her every move is being traced. Tearing through the forest with dogs howling in the distance, on a moonlit night in 1903, alone in the Canadian wilderness, she is one step ahead of her pursuers. Mary Boulton is 19 years old, half mad and widowed - by her own hand.
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