Forever 33

Janet Money is a writer and policy analyst for the Canadian Cystic
Fibrosis Foundation in Toronto.

A soldier knows that he will die, and buried deep he’ll be. The digger may live to ninety-nine but he’ll stay thirty-three.

McClelland and Stewart did not declare a winner in the 1980 Seal First Novel Competition, but it did publish this entry, Forever 33.

Byfield has set his short novel in a fictional Alberta town called Brerry, during the Depression. The gravedigger who quotes the rhyme above is a mysterious stranger who qualifies for the job with the statement, “It’s many dealings I’ve had with death.”

John Evans, a World War One veteran and amputee, also proves to be familiar with the lives of various townspeople. He understands the minister’s personal crisis, the hardware store owner’s seven-year itch and a youth’s desire to murder his insane father. And he quietly solves these problems, one after another, before slipping away to a more natural home, in London during the Battle of Britain. This digger is a soldier, and he does not live to ninety-nine.

Forever 33 tells a simple, mildly amusing story and makes few demands on the reader. Byfield’s dialogue is occasionally wooden, but his scenes are well drawn and his characters are interesting. This first novel is not an award-winner, but it shows promise of better things to come.