Son of a Trickster

Jared is a teenager living in Kitimat in northern B.C. with his native mom and her current boyfriend, Richie. Jared’s got the normal problems of teenagers — alcohol, drugs, sex, and surviving high school. Plus his mom is somewhat challenging even when she’s not drunk, or high on coke, or out of her head on meth. At least Jared has some elderly neighbours, the Jaks, that he likes. And he’s got a hobby, baking cookies. Okay, they are not your ordinary cookies, but at least gaining the label “Cookie Dude” by the stoner crowd is some kind of acceptance at school. And now Sarah, the Jaks’ granddaughter, has come to stay with them. Sarah is smart and sassy and beautifully weird. And if he could ignore the talking fireflies show more buzzing around her head, she’d be great.

Eden Robinson brings Jared and his friends entirely to life in this novel. That’s no small feat since Jared’s life will be outside the experience zone of most readers, I think. He’s funny and sensitive and sweet but life for him is especially hard. It probably doesn’t help that there are rumours that he’s not entirely human, that he’s really the offspring of the Trickster god, Wee’git. And just like that, Robinson is able to weave the mythic into her gritty realism in such a way that the reader just takes it as one more of the many things weighing down Jared’s life.

That has a double edge. Because life is hard enough without also learning that you and your mom and others are at the mercy of not-so-friendly gods and witches. If this mythic world is real — and certainly it is consistently taken as real in the novel — then it seems very unfair. Yet one hesitates to think what all this means if the mythic here is not real.

As the novel develops, Jared’s interactions with the spirit-world increase with numerous consequences. Alas, just as things are taking a turn, this novel ends. Just one of the dangers of reading something that turns out to be a trilogy. Now I’ll definitely have to track down the next two books in the series. And all of Eden Robinson’s other writings as well.

Easily recommended. show less

I found this an engaging read. It would be easy to stereotype Jared as a stoner and a burnout, but he has a strong core of compassion and sense of duty, looking after his dad and stepsister financially and helping his elderly neighbours with chores. I liked the juxtaposition of the fantastical elements with the mundane details of being a teenager. And I especially liked the Doctor Who marathon some of the characters have at one point. (This definitely caught my attention in the table of contents.) I look forward to reading more about Jared in the next book in the series.

This is a very raw book. Robinson has a very sparse style, never a word extra, and a gift for character and dialogue. Every character feels like she’s genuinely pulled them from real life, even the teens, and a lot of the scenes and situations do too. She does not stint on dealing with things like poverty, abuse, and drugs. At all.

This is probably the most baldly realistic book I’ve read in a while, possibly forever, and that’s with the grace notes of magic threaded through it. (Is First Nations magic realism a thing? It is now.) It also has the slow, wry narrative style I’m familiar with from Native legends, where things kind of just happen, what’re you gonna do, and that works really well for this story too.

My biggest issue? show more When she writes people texting, she uses the abbreviated textspeak stuff (l8r, etc.) which felt less accurate to me than the rest of it.

Warnings: Drug and alcohol abuse. Child neglect and abuse. Implied spousal abuse. Dog dies in the first chapter. Side character attempts suicide and self-harm.

8/10 show less

I had to think for awhile about Eden Robinson’s first two novels in her Trickster trilogy, Son of a Trickster, which was shortlisted for the Giller in 2018, and Trickster Drift.

The novels tell the story of Jared, a burned-out kid of mid-adolescence, living on the west coast of Canada in an Haisla Nation family. To say his family dynamics are abusive and dysfunctional would be understatement. With no moral compass but his own sense of compassion, and desire for something better, brighter, he gets by in high school by squeezing cramming sessions of study in between baking and selling pot cookies in order to pay the bills. And when it all becomes too much, he sinks into binge-drinking.

The novels can easily slide into magic realism, even show more dark urban fantasy. They are relentless in pace and emotional tension, with tight, spare writing that mirrors the desperation of Jared’s life. Certainly, the novels are award-worthy. Not easy to read because of the brutality and hopelessness of the narrative. But most definitely brilliantly written. You could say they are a modern, dark take on J.D. Salinger’s now legendary Catcher in the Rye.

What has given me pause, however—and please understand this in no way is a reflection of the author’s skill—is the classification of these novels. That is to say, they are marketed as YA.
When my daughter-in-law informed me of that, I was, to put it mildly, gobsmacked. What follows in this review-come-commentary, contains many spoilers, so be advised.

Perhaps my problem with the novels is a sign of my own ageing, of carrying with me what is perhaps an outdated compass more suited to senior citizens than current societal standards. But having read these novels I have to wonder about what kind of standards and messages we’re cementing in society, let alone for our youth, particularly First Nations youth, with the promulgation of literature so egregiously violent and lacking in hope.
As a first example I give you Maggie, Jared’s mother. She is a bad-ass junkie of a mother, with a reputation of a witch in the Haisla tradition, whose expertise, besides being able to cast curses and wardings, is to ally herself to a drug-dealing man who has about as much interest in carving out a safe, secure environment for Jared let alone Maggie, as finding a legitimate way to make his way in the world. Maggie swings between fierce love, casual neglect, and outright violence toward her son. The worldview she imparts to Jared is that in order to get by you have to be tougher, stronger, more violent than anyone who opposes you, no boundaries, anything goes. She helps him to deal. She obtains for him a handgun and teaches him how to use it.
As illustration of her complete lack of parenting skills, when she discovers a previous boyfriend, David, was in the act of sadistic, violent torture of her son (kneeling on Jared’s chest so that he could slowly, casually, break the boy’s ribs), her response is to nail David’s feet to the floor with a power-nailer. (I won’t get into the implausibility of sneaking up on someone with a power-nailer.) When she drags Jared out from under David, she then, in a rage and without regard for Jared’s serious injury, commands Jared to nail David’s armpits to the floor. Only after Jared refuses is an EMS team summoned and the boy’s injuries addressed. He then spends his recovery couch-surfing with an elderly neighbour.

The level of egregious violence and written detail regarding this encounter put me in mind of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.

And this is only one example of the relentless onslaught of graphic violence in both novels.
Now, understand, I have no difficulty whatever with this level of violence and darkness in novels for adults. Certainly, I’ve published fiction for adults by authors who write this sort of dark literature. However, I do have a great deal of difficulty with novels of such an explicit and hopeless nature for young adults. I have to ask myself, perhaps in a typically senior fashion, what kind of message does this send to our youth? It’s hard enough finding your way as a young person, particularly today, without creating a normalized view of this sort of violence. And then what about First Nations youth who are, of course, going to want to read work by a First Nations author, particularly literature targeted for exactly their demographic?

That suicide rates, alcohol and substance abuse are rife among our First Nations youth is a national crisis. And then we’re going to introduce this kind of literature to them, let them know it’s okay to read because it’s been cleared by the publishing gatekeepers for them? And then we’re going to expect them to be able to find some sense of hope? That there’s a way out? That there’s maybe something more hopeful in their society and their lives than violence, drug abuse and the endless repetition of that? That they’re told they need to educate themselves, but then read about a young person who is desperately trying to do just that, and who is constantly dragged down not only by drugs and violence, but by the magic of his own culture? That there’s no way out but through violence?

That’s the message in these two books. It’s very clear. As an adult, I can discern, navigate, discuss. But as a young person? Sure, I’m not saying young people aren’t capable of rational thought. But I am saying if you continue to disseminate a message of violence and hopelessness, that’s what you get.

So, at the heart of this categorization of the Trickster Trilogy as YA, I cannot help but feel this is no more than a marketing ploy by the publishers to capitalize on a soaring trend in literature. Ride the YA train to financial gain. The hell with any kind of societal responsibility, particularly to First Nations youth.

Would I recommend the Trickster Trilogy? Most definitely. To adults. But I will never recommend these novels as reading for YA. show less

Robinson is a trickster her bad self. This isn't just a coming-of-age story with some Indigenous Hagrid barking, "Yer a wizard, Jared." It's a portrait of the trickster as a young man; it's a treatise on generational addiction; it's an indictment of colonial destruction; it's pure poetry about how neighbourly respect and young love can blossom even in the bleakest environments. Excellent read. I'm looking forward to the sequels.

Son of a Trickster is by Indigenous Canadian author Eden Robinson. It is an intense coming-of-age story about Jared who at 16 has a lot to deal with. A broken family, a dead beat father, social pressures, drugs, alcohol, poverty and a slightly insane mother. Throughout the story the author has interwoven a First Nations myth about the trickster, Wee’jit.

Set in Kitimat, B.C. this is a dark story. Drug abuse and alcoholism are the driving force in both Jared’s father and mother’s lives. The author does insert plenty of humor, but it is hard to ignore the fact that Jared is more responsible that either of his parents but his life appears to be heading much the same way as theirs. His rough life is not unusual among the Indigenous of show more Canada and the author’s inclusion of the folklore and magical elements help in our understanding of the culture but do nothing to lighten the story.

Son of a Trickster is built around the character of Jared and he is someone that I could really root for. Yes, he drinks, uses drugs and makes money by baking pot cookies but he is generous to others, thoughtful and caring and his close relationship with his mother was endearing. Although there was very little resolution to the story, I understand that this is the first of a trilogy and so the story will continue on. Son of a Trickster works at giving a voice to the Canadian First Nations and the author is to be applauded to painting such a strong and vivid picture. show less

I heard Eden Robinson on the radio talking about her newly-released sequel (or prequel) to this book, so I thought I’d pick it up. This is almost like a kind of urban fantasy—Canadian style. Jared is 16 and parties hard in his northern BC town. His mother parties even harder and runs alarmingly, explosively hot and cold. Jared has had supernatural encounters since childhood but doesn’t have the vocabulary to articulate or understand them, so he chalks them up to hangovers and bad drug trips. The first part of this book is filled with partying, family drama, and a budding love affair—all the things you’d expect from a novel about a teenage kid. But when the supernatural invades to the point where other humans (or what Jared show more always believed were humans—need to intervene, the story gets really weird. But this is an entirely human story, showing that even people who have the spirits in their sights can fall off the rails. I look forward to reading more of this series. show less