Lynn Coady

Following her mother’s death, 40-something Karen returns to Nova Scotia to care for her developmentally disabled sister Kelli and take charge of the family home. In Toronto, where she’s lived and worked for years, Karen has recently gone through a painful and messy divorce: these wounds are still fresh. Karen is a lone soul: her father is long dead and there are no other siblings. She seems to have few friends and no other relatives. About twenty years earlier, when she asserted her show more independence and left home determined to build a life that did not revolve around serving the round-the-clock needs of her mentally challenged sister, her mother accused her of selfishness. They argued, and the relationship since has been strained, to the point that, though they communicated, Karen did not even know that her mother’s cancer had advanced to the life-threatening stage. This is the setup for Watching You Without Me, Lynn Coady’s suspenseful tale of a grieving young woman’s efforts to break free of a past that has left her guilt-ridden and emotionally fragile. Enter Trevor, a support-worker employed by a care firm called Bestlife and assigned to Kelli’s case. Karen, in a highly vulnerable state and overwhelmed by the myriad chores and life-altering decisions that follow the death of a parent—concerning the house, its contents, Kelli’s future, and, as it turns out, her own future—is grateful for Trevor’s seemingly kindly insistence on helping out in any way he can. She realizes that he’s pushy and manipulative, controlling and temperamental, but is confident she can handle him, and since she has no one else to rely on she seeks his advice and accepts his recommendations on care facilities where Kelli could take up residence once the house is sold. Trevor becomes a fixture, assuming household chores and insinuating himself into her life in other less obvious ways. The story develops as a gradual dawning, with Karen resisting the evidence before her eyes until so much disturbing truth has been revealed that she’s forced to take drastic action. Coady’s masterstroke in this novel is Karen’s first-person voice: a breezy, uninhibited, occasionally expletive-laced, sometimes very funny vernacular that carries the reader along through the numerous twists and turns of an intricately plotted story. Watching You Without Me, a smart and enormously entertaining page-turner, is also a triumph of storytelling, filled with complex characters whose fates come to matter greatly. show less

Slow-burn Caregiver Stalking Tale
Review of the House of Anansi Press paperback edition (2019)

In the past several years I've had a fairly intense grounding in the home care and the long-term care home environment with various elderly relatives. That experience introduces you to a whirlwind of personalities each of whom have their personal traits, quirks and foibles. The motherly warm-hearted bedside manner is the ideal and at the other extreme may be the insistent demanding cloying show more passive/aggressive character who is the family's bête noire in this excellent slow-burning paranoia and suspense tale from Lynn Coady.

Things start out fairly benign as Karen assumes a home caregiver with her mentally-challenged sister Kelli after their mother Irene has passed away. There is the usual daily/weekly cycles of PSWs (Personal Service Workers) and Social Workers. One of these stands out fairly quickly though and Karen gradually learns what her mother may have had to experience under Trevor's "care." There is a lot of foreshadowing towards a climactic event as you get the sense that Karen is telling the story in hindsight to friends who are variously shocked at decisions or points that Karen ignored or delayed acting upon along the way. So you know going in that she has survived the experience but you are still held in suspense waiting to know how it works out for everyone else. show less

The title story in this collection, “Play the Monster Blind”, is utterly and morbidly gripping. In it, Lynn Coady displays a curious but fascinating affinity for the hulking gentle male who is nonetheless capable of near-instant violence. Her characters ooze out of the Nova Scotian bedrock. “Earthy” is almost too modest of an adjective for them. And yet they seem entirely real. Even her narrator, who naturally maintains a degree of distance, is somehow complicit. You end up thinking show more that this can’t possibly end well, regardless of how it does end.

Sometimes Coady presents a character sketch, as with the irrepressible Murdeena in “Jesus Christ, Murdeena”. At other times we get the slightly distanced view on local rituals, as in “A Great Man’s Passing”. But usually it is violent men that are her subject, even if that violence is usually contained by the semi-civilized rules of a sport, as in “Batter My Heart”. In all of these stories, Coady writes with clarity and passion.

Less successful, perhaps, are the stories that revolve around a set of female characters. Some of these feel uncertain. Similar incidents recur in separate stories as though Coady is feeling her way in the dark, bumping into the same objects without noticing. Or as if these are different drafts of some further story she is yet to write. The result is a somewhat uneven collection. The best stories, which tend to be those gathered towards the front of the book, set such a high standard that the weaker ones appear even weaker when set in relief. That’s unfortunate because with a bit more rigorous selection this could easily have been a first-rate collection. Thus the dangers of a prolific writer without a censorious editor. But certainly there is enough here to warrant reading more of Coady, which is what I will surely do. Gently recommended. show less

Anyone who writes short stories knows how difficult it is to get their characters talking and stitch scenes together and provide just enough backstory and create a complete drama in 20 pages, more or less. The trick is making it seem easy. In Hellgoing Lynn Coady makes it seem easy. These are nine entertaining, thought-provoking stories drawn from life in the here and now, narrated with energy, verve and irreverent humour. Coady's characters are insecure and questioning their place in the show more world, concerned that they are not living up to expectations and terrified that they will fail in a way that exposes them to the contempt and ridicule of colleagues, friends or family. Their actions are often guided by an instinct for self-preservation or a desire to make things right or to protect themselves from embarrassment. In "Wireless" alcoholic Jane, travelling alone on business in Newfoundland, cuts short a booze-inspired relationship with Ned when she realizes she's being manipulated. In "Dogs in Clothes" Sam, a young publishers' rep charged with accompanying author Marco through a whirlwind series of interviews and public appearances, emboldened by alcohol finally cracks and tells him off for being a rude and insensitive jackass. And in "Mr. Hope," Shelly's relationship with her teacher evolves over time to become something mysterious yet oddly comforting that she realizes she will probably never understand. Coady's full-throttle approach almost makes it seem like the stories are slapped together, but if you slow down you will see how much care has been taken not just in the writing but also in the editing. These are stories as remarkable for what's in them as for what's left out. Some reviewers have remarked on the lack of resolution, but that's a matter of taste. For those who enjoy the open-endedness of art that imitates life, Hellgoing is a treat. show less