Blasted.

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British
Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and author of The Salvation Army and the
Public.

What a helluva mixed up, messed up young lady is Ruby Jones. Determined to make some sense of her life (though nearly always failing), she pendulums between the “southside hills” of St. John’s and the side streets of Toronto, more often in a drunken stupor than with anything like a clear-eyed vision of her destiny. She has, she thinks, an affinity with the long-dead Beothuck, Shawnadithit, a victim like herself of inscrutable fate. But that, like so much else, seems to be mere escapism. Just to belong, she keeps thinking, “What would that be like? To awaken in the morning and not have my first feeling be, who am I one of? What am I for?”The answer seems to elude her, and the hopeful reader must keep plugging away (if, indeed, he/she can last that long), to see if there ever might be an answer worth the effort of staying with her in her misery. Story is a good writer, but is asking too much of us to endure such intensive anxiety in such a boring character.