cart
Whitlock shuffles the lives of a family of thirty-somethings in Dunbridge, Ont., with a lively hand.
The title of Toronto author Nathan Whitlock's debut novel grounds us firmly in the quotidian. A week is an economic unit, the work week that defines the lives of the employed and which used to give a special meaning to the weekend. Each week is pretty much the same as any other.
There is no cycle, they simply repeat. As for the "this" . . . well, you know. The anagram suggests itself: A week of the same crap with seven different labels.
Manda, the novel's central character, is aware of this at least on a subconscious level:
"The day had escaped her, she'd done nothing with it. She used to feel as though every minute went by left its mark on her, cut her as it ticked over, but now it was as though days and weeks were just a muddy flow."
So yes, a week of that. And since Manda's husband runs his own business and everyone else works adjustable hours and schedules, there's no time off for good behaviour. In fact, the book begins and ends on a Wednesday, the traditional hump day, but this has almost no significance. Not only does Sunday no longer belong to the Lord, it's indistinguishable from any other day. Everyone works on the weekend.
And yet for all of its kitchen-sink documentation of life among the endangered working class, sinking into tar pits of debt on easy credit, A Week of This is not a dull read. Whitlock shuffles the lives of a family of thirty-somethings in Dunbridge, Ont., with a lively hand. In a rarity for Canadian fiction, the main characters are shown doing those anonymous jobs we don't hear much about but encounter nearly every day.
Manda works at a call centre and her husband, Patrick, owns and operates a failing sporting goods store. Her brother, Ken, is slow-witted, but has a job stocking shelves at the local discount superstore. Marcus, her brother-in-law, is a slacker who coaches hockey, does a bit of warehouse work (which leads to constant whining about his back) and otherwise acts as a sponge.
What's most impressive about the book is its sense of control. Whitlock wisely avoids trying to do too much with his material. His epigraph is borrowed from Howards End and refers to E. M. Forster's "tragedy of preparedness," the waste of everyday life spent anticipating crises that never come. The novel has many moments of dramatic intensity, but nothing greatly significant or transformative happens. This lack of resolution in the plot is not open-endedness. The tragedy of these lives is that they are both so limited and so complete. Having experienced a week, we know all the rest.
Manda isn't having a baby. Patrick isn't going to give up the store. Marcus isn't going to settle down. And nobody, not even Ken, is getting out of Dunbridge.
Whitlock doesn't sentimentalize or condescend to his characters or make them seem more important than they are. But they are brought sharply into focus through everything from their patterns of speech ("How does it stink so bad in here?") to their unhealthy, high-starch diets.
Though the concept requires a bit of backtracking to fill in family history, this is handled with a minimum of awkwardness. The pace is well maintained and the days pass quickly. Not, however, without making a powerful impact.
Alex Good is a Cambridge writer.
