Ali Bryan

Ten years after her raucously entertaining debut novel, Roost, Ali Bryan checks in with Claudia and her family to bring readers up to date on their latest adventures. Coq continues in the hectic, tragi-comic vein of the first book. Ten years after the event, Claudia is still grappling with emotional fallout from her mother’s sudden, unexpected death. For Claudia, family is a priority. Her children, Wes and Joan, grown from toddlers into teens, have opinions and expectations they don’t show more mind voicing, often quite loudly. Claudia’s ex-husband, Glen, still in the picture, his mind annoyingly broadened by the experience of extended foreign travel, has “found himself” and is re-evaluating past life choices. But in the midst of her busy career and the challenge of raising two children in the age of social media and legal cannabis, much of Claudia’s attention and concern is drawn to her aging father, who, as the novel opens, is marrying again after a brief romance with Mona. Luckily for everyone, Mona, despite a few eccentricities, seems to be a rock: dependable, emotionally stable, level-headed. The idea of a family trip to Paris (a place her mother always wanted to visit), occurs to Claudia after the wedding as a way to honour her mother’s memory and provide the family with much needed closure. Needless to say, things do not go strictly as planned. In Coq, Ali Bryan has fashioned a novel packed with dramatic incident and bursting with amusing twists and turns. The story, narrated by Claudia in her trademark irreverent vernacular, moves briskly. In Paris, Claudia finds that confronting her own oft-neglected emotional needs—which she finally does, albeit reluctantly—is key to moving forward. But can she set aside the needs of others—her father, her children, Glen, Felix—long enough to figure out how to take the next step and get on with her life? In this follow-up novel, Ali Bryan once again ushers us into the rapidly evolving world of a strong, smart, independent woman who often feels crushed by the weight of demands coming at her from all directions, but who is also beginning to realize (and maybe accept) that if she doesn’t take care of herself first, her efforts to care for those she loves will come to nothing. Coq—something of an emotional roller-coaster but also wise, touching, funny and deeply felt—is a fitting sequel to its award-winning predecessor. Fans of Roost will not be disappointed. show less

Ali Bryan's debut novel Roost is the amusing and oddly touching story of Claudia, single mother and marketing professional. Narrated in Claudia's edgy, fast-paced, plain-spoken voice, the novel takes us through a series of personal crises as she struggles to wrangle her children-—Wes (four) and Joan (two)-—and cope with her father's erratic behaviour following the death of her mother. Separated from Glen, who is still in the picture but showing distinct signs of moving on with his life, show more Claudia's days are already complex and hectic before her mother's sudden death during a Caribbean vacation. After this her father becomes an additional worry. But Claudia cannot slow down or take time off. Life and career continue to make demands and she has no choice but to meet them head on. Ali Bryan's Claudia could very well be the prototypical 21st-century single mom: a young woman for whom emotional fulfillment is elusive and who makes it through the day with her head hovering just above the waterline, thankful for any stray moment of peace she can snatch, a glass of wine in one hand and a soggy diaper in the other. Though none are particularly capable, and all have troubles of their own, she is unashamedly reliant on sympathetic friends and family to hold it all together. Not above bribing her kids with fast food and ice cream to get them to behave, and calling her kitchen appliances assholes when they don’t cooperate, Claudia is hardly a candidate for mother of the year. But she does what she has to and succeeds (more or less) against sizable odds, and by these means wins over the reader. Her business trip to Calgary is a brilliant set piece, in itself worth the price of admission. Ali Bryan has written a witty, sharply observed and genuinely entertaining novel that will appeal to readers who can appreciate its ironic perspective. And for the sociologists among us, it is also a wry and astute commentary on family, sibling rivalry and contemporary life in urban Canada. show less

Ali Bryan creates an all-too-believable contemporary family in The Figgs: June and Randy Figg, confused and loving parents; Tom, Derek, and Vanessa, adult children all, negotiating adulthood with halting success. June’s recently retired, Randy’s still working as a carpenter, both eagerly but ambivalently awaiting the departure of their children from their childhood rooms. Each of the five Figgs hold secrets from each other: an out-of-wedlock child; a brief, unwanted pregnancy; a lesbian show more lover; a remarkably generous present to a grandmother sunk deep into senile dementia; an addiction to especially weird pornography.

Bryan threads several themes throughout The Figgs: adoption as guilt and as mystery; parents’ disappointments with and fears for their adult children; the limits of parents’ knowledge and understanding of their adult children; those many secrets kept by all families, both individually and collectively; parents’ difficulties in trying to discern the reality of the adult child from the fantasy of the adult child refracted through the parental lens of ten or twenty years earlier.

Reading The Figgs may bring with it a an uncomfortable frisson of recognition: some readers may dismiss The Figgs and its five fictional Figgs and say, “not another novel about a dysfunctional family” or “I’m so glad that they’re not my kids”; some may say, “we’ve been through much worse with our kids”; and others may say—and I’m among them—that Ali Bryan has done an extremely creditable job of populating a family with ordinary people with ordinary troubles and ordinary joys. What’s notable about Ali Bryan’s portrayal of The Figgs is how she tells their individual and collective stories with both humor and empathy throughout. Reading The Figgs brought to mind an updated family comedy, easy to read and cleverly compressed into about three hundred engaging and amusing pages.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Freehand Books for providing me with The Figgs in return for an honest review, and the excellent CanLit site Consumed by Inkfor bringing The Figgs to my attention. show less

Ali Bryan has concocted a story that is wacky, zany, a bit off the wall and sometimes outrageous. Meet the Figgs, a family with more issues than there are pages in this book. June and Randy, parents who wish their children would grow up, move, out and move on, but maybe not too quickly. Tom, Vanessa and Derek, siblings whose personalities collide but who have each other’s backs when the need arises. Adoption, single parenting, Gay relationships, dementia, each subject finds a place in this show more story.

I was completely conflicted about this book. It was laugh out loud funny in places, it was sad and wistful in other parts, completely believable and absolutely unbelievable.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Freehand Books for a copy. show less