A chorus of voices weaving the indigenous culture and stories of British Columbia

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Bella Bella: A Novel

Brandon Reid | Nightwood Editions

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$24.95 | 335 pages

The story is simple. A young son and his father, Derik and George, travel north to the British Columbia coast to bury an estranged grandfather and reconnect with other family members. They fish, survive a huge storm and painful family dinners, and return with some peace and a new connection. However, a simple story can become new and timeless thanks to the art and heart of telling it. This version sings, shines and emits lasting echoes.

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Imagine having the literary ambition, the sheer glorious chutzpah, of publishing a first novel that combines the influences of your ancestral Heiltsuk culture with a deep and passionate engagement with some of the giants of 20th-century modernist fiction, not to mention pop culture so richly experienced. for your 12-year-old protagonist. Richmond professor Brandon Reid has that chutzpah, and in his first novel he largely succeeds in the difficult task.

“James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake brought me closer to lyricism and aesthetics in literature. I didn’t understand most of what I read, but I found pure joy in the musicality of his words. I care less about the subject matter than how the language is used,” Reid told the Georgia Straight on Nov. 18, when his novel Bella Bella was published.

The book is rich in “…sheer joy in the musicality of its words,” which Reid loves in Joyce, but it also offers many themes, content ranging from recollections of the horrors of residential schools to lessons on the form correct fishing. from salmon, to addiction and recovery, to a glorious final integration involving a shaman, a spirit guide and cannibal dancers, with stops along the way to reflect on outlaw bikers, Freemasons and the British royal family.

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This is not a book that presents simple, linear polemics, even on topics that obviously matter deeply to the author. It is a chorus of contending voices, a luminously intersectional web far more complex and beautiful than any simple binary.

The characters shout, sing, dance and push, tease and cry in completely persuasive ways, but they resist the narrative temptations of an easy resolution or cheap redemption. Derik and his father George are particularly moving and memorable figures, but the novel’s many singers in the chorus contribute to the resounding chaos that forms the background music of all dysfunctional families and all great myths and art.

Highly recommended.

Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. Welcome your comments and suggestions about stories on [email protected]

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