A Game to Play on the Tracks

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Lorna Jackson is a Vancouver Island writer, critic, and teacher. Her
most recent book portrays the short life of Arden, bar singer and recent
mother, who moves from gig to gig in British Columbia’s lumber and
mining towns, unwilling and/or unable to conquer her drinking problem
and an emotional detachment from her Vancouver-based husband, Nichol.

Arden’s world is edgy and gritty, but, in Jackson’s words, also
fluid with meaning. “In Vancouver,” she writes, describing one of
Arden’s jobs, “this would be the bar of choice for stockbrokers. On
creosote stilts above high tide, windows and carpets grimy with salt and
algae and body fluids; out there the Johnstone Strait, waters that tag
along with hopeful currents to Japan, Russia; a fleet of fish boats,
aluminum like bridge girders or wooden-hulled, like artifacts.”
Arden’s reality is raw and painful, and it leads, halfway through the
novel, to her suicide, leaving Nichol to involve himself with a series
of women, all of whom have some connection with Arden (whose ghost
continues to haunt her husband and son).

The book’s conclusion belongs to the boy, Roy, an adolescent
struggling to understand his own realities. Jackson’s female
characters are all remarkable for their strengths and weaknesses. They
force Nichol to confront himself in different ways, tasks for which he
has little aptitude.