A Sack of Teeth

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

Vancouver writer Grant Buday, author of Under Glass (1994) and White
Lung (1999), has fashioned a strong novel, remarkable for its shifting
points of view and for its compact time frame of a single day in
September 1965. Alternating among the perspectives of Ray Klein, his
young wife, Lorraine, and their six-year-old son, Jack, Buday tells the
story of a dysfunctional Vancouver family.

The plot unfolds slowly, conventionally, with Jack reluctantly going to
his first day of school, Ray leaving for his engineering job, and
Lorraine going to see about the terrible smell coming up from the
basement of their East Van home. The Kleins’ tenant, a Frenchman named
Antoine Gaudin, has 36 canaries and a dark past. With nothing more than
his accent and European flair, he has won Lorraine’s heart. Ray is
having an affair with his secretary. Jack is suffering the attention of
his rather sadistic Grade 1 teacher.

To set in motion such a disparate group of people takes considerable
skill. Buday is as successful with his descriptions as he is with his
characterizations. He sizes up Vancouver rain about as well as anyone:
“clay-grey clouds, bare black trees, damp walls, rotting fences, wet
tarmac, flowing sewers, overflowing ditches and drizzle dripping through
endless afternoons, day after day, week after week, all winter long, the
only brightness the neon signs reflected off the water rushing along the
gutters and gleaming on wet cars.” Buday’s minor characters are as
sharply drawn as his protagonists. Sven Skog, a Norwegian wife-beater,
and his family live next door. Charlene, Ray’s 40-something mistress,
sadly and realistically sizes up her life. The revelation of Antoine’s
past sets in motion a denouement that would be anticlimactic in less
skilful hands. Buday keeps improving. A Sack of Teeth is highly
recommended.