Courtesy of Viking Canada

Let's Hear It For The Boyden | Less than a month ago, author Joseph Boyden won the Giller Prize for his novel Through Black Spruce.

THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE
By Joseph Boyden. Viking. 360 pp. $34
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Joseph Boyden’s Giller Prize-winning new novel Through Black Spruce is just as much about storytelling as it is about the stories told. Annie Bird, having just returned from a tortuous and predominantly unsuccessful quest to find her missing model sister, tells her story to her unconscious uncle Will Bird in a hospital room in Moose Factory, Ont. Presumably from that same room, but in an alternate, comatose world — a place where “there is no more embarrassment” — Will speaks to his nieces about his own incriminating history. Like Annie, Will finds a space beyond judgment, beyond supposition, where he is able to tell the incredible stories that haunt his soul.

“I wanted to express the idea of how important oral tradition is,” explains Boyden from a Toronto hotel room, “the healing power behind confessing to your loved ones your life and not holding it back. When you have nothing left, it’s a very powerful medicine.”

Annie’s search begins when her friend Eva wins big in bingo; they take a celebratory trip to Toronto — Annie’s first time away from James Bay. In the big city, she meets a community of evasive Aboriginals who seem to know her sister Suzanne. They live on the streets, and — albeit in a metropolitan way — off the land, hunting birds on the lakeshore and begging urbanites for blankets and Perrier. Annie partakes in a feast of roasted goose and sparkling water under a highway overpass. “This tastes different than goose back home,” she reflects, wishing she had some salt.

From Toronto, Annie follows a lead to Montreal, where she meets her lookalike sister’s modelling agent and picks up a modelling gig of her own. Suzanne’s friends sweep Annie into their glamourous circle of wine, fashion, clubbing, and ecstasy. The latest rumours of Suzanne’s whereabouts take Annie to New York City, where, through a string of perilous connections, she lands a chic, rent-free apartment.

“I just had to go where she wanted to go,” says Boyden of his young protagonist, “and some of those places are very foreign to me — Manhattan and the fashion world — so it was kind of interesting to try to express her journey in the written word.”

But Boyden does have some experience with the world Annie slips into. “I was quite the wild one when I was younger,” he admits. “I did plenty of whatever Annie has done in the novel. And my wife Amanda is a former model. I also joke that I had seven older sisters, so ... I’m trying to work around the trauma of being dressed up as a girl and having makeup applied to me from a small age.”

Annie shares the textual stage with her uncle Will, the narrative alternating between her voice and his. “With Will and Annie,” says Boyden, “I much more strongly connect with Will’s character. I love the bush and the idea of having to flee into the bush has always fascinated me.”

After suffering horrific threats and violent attacks from his rival, Marius Netmaker, fear overtakes Will in his hometown of Moosonee. An obsessive jogger, he keeps up his morning runs, but now he goes out “like a soldier, rifle strapped on [his] back.” Ultimately, Will decides to kill Marius and take off into the desolate bush.

Boyden’s ending, in which the Bird family reunites at Will’s father’s old hunt camp, verges on deus ex machina. And the concluding scene is just a bit too precious. The reader remains caught up in the gnarled branches of the novel while the Birds enjoy their sandwiches on the bay.

But, to be fair, Will has already warned us that stories are never as neat as we would like them to be. “Fucking stories,” he gripes. “Twisted things that come out no matter how we want them.”