The National Post
Being plagued by hiccups while incarcerated at the psych ward of Castlebar hospital in northwest Ireland is just one of the many troubles of Phil (a.k.a. Philomena, Our Woman, and Kathleen), the distraught woman-on-the-verge at the centre of Malarky, a delightfully offbeat debut novel by Vancouver’s Anakana Schofield.
A farmer’s wife “trained for marriage and funeral and weeding and shifting and turning, but not wondering,” Our Woman (as she calls herself in the first person segments that wind across the kaleidoscopic narrative’s 20 “Episodes”) discovers the need for deep thought and a redrawn map of life when circumstances throw her domestic routine into disarray. Suddenly, there’s Red the Twit, the guilt-ridden born-again mistress of her husband — Himself, a man possessed of “dour quietness” — who’s confessed to ongoing infidelity. And there’s the “malarky” she’s witnessed involving her college-age son Jimmy, who’s very actively sowing oats with a neighbour’s son.
Facing betrayal and bursts of chaotic libido from husband and child alike, Our Woman, by turns livid, raging, helpless, frustrated and confused (“confused being the polite local term for possessed”), seeks vengeance against an indifferent, philandering husband. Deciding she “wants to consume rather than be consumed,” Our Woman opts for some carnal adventuring of her own and — surprisingly — close mimicry of her son’s fevered explorations.
Schofield’s story shifts rapidly from point of view and through decades worth of history, necessitating a puzzle-solving state of mind for the reader. In the present day of Malarky, Our Woman speaks mostly to herself and a counsellor she nicknames Grief. By her own admission Our Woman is “officially taken strange” (and “a very small bit demented”), not least because of the death of her husband and son. While a few flashbacks touch on the early days of her marriage, the majority dwell on her son’s unapologetic coming out and the steady dissolution of the family bonds.
Despite a gloomy prospect that might bring to mind such brooding Canadian classics as Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel and Audrey Thomas’s Mrs. Blood, Schofield shows a deft — and altogether welcome — comic touch. For instance, Our Woman’s aged “gang” (“like tight ligaments in each other’s life, contracting, extending and sustaining the muscle of each other, house to house, ear to ear”), is a wonderful network of skeptical crones.
And Our Woman’s vengeful efforts result in hilarious bad-sex escapades. She follows an awkward seduction of Card Man, a lame-duck salesman (“He huffed and puffed on top of her and said you’re great, great, you’re a great girl the same affectionate way farmers talk to their cows”), with an equally flat-lining tryst with Halim, a Syrian-born, gynecology-obsessed security guard who eventually labels her a “dirty old woman” when she attempts to reenact her son’s particular sexual pleasures.
Even her short summations, from birth (“I was stitched from my arse to my elbow. I was tired, I was resentful and I wanted to cut my own hands off”) to old age (“Isn’t that the final installment, hanging around in people’s way as they step around you and about you?), are bracing. The gloom of Our Woman’s philosophy of existence is ever-enlivened by Schofield’s handling of tart Irish phrasing.
If the episodes of madness are less compelling, it may be because the novel’s relative brevity does not allow for enough access to Our Woman’s psychology. Moving from antic comic set pieces to scenes of existential despair (and back) is a radical change of genre and content. Schofield ably manages the transitions, but her intimate familiarity with Our Woman — the novel was written over a decade — could be shared more readily with readers, who are meeting the character for the first time.
Malarky closes with Our Woman lonely and bereaving. She’s not about to give up, though, and Schofield leaves her with a hopeful if not rosy instant of insight: “It’s beautiful when it all makes sense. Occasionally it makes sense, just for a moment.”
• Brett Josef Grubisic teaches at the University of British Columbia.
Malarky: A Novel in Episodes
By Anakana Schofield
Biblioasis
222 pp; $19.95