Shooting Angels

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

Ottawa writer Mary Bragg’s first novel is full of action, with meaty
characters.

Roy Brown returns from his job as a CBC photographer in Bosnia when he
receives news of his parents’ death in a car accident. Soon
thereafter, he opens the doors of his parents’ house in Ottawa to an
old friend, performance artist Sargent Major, and to a teenage runaway,
Hilda.

A lot happens in the novel. Bragg brings together several narrative
threads. On the world stage, there is the war in Bosnia and the imminent
1995 Quebec sovereignty vote, while on the personal level, Roy and his
house guests are being bedevilled by demons not always of their own
making. “During the debates on sovereignty, the crisis in Bosnia was
unfolding,” Bragg said in a recent interview. “And so I sent Roy
Brown to Sarajevo with a camera, and hoicked him home to Ottawa to be
traumatized by his parents’ deaths.” Her voice is omniscient,
dealing with crises in serial and parallel fashion. Roy’s grief and
anger are superimposed on the brutality visited on Hilda by her family;
his burgeoning love for Laura, a single mother, is nuanced by the
growing Quebec movement for independence.

What faults there are in Bragg’s writing stem from a lack of
specificity in dialogue and tone; there is a need for more refinement
and separation, which, in turn, would result in the imagery that is
lacking in this first effort. But Bragg’s voice in this first effort
is powerful and committed.