Coming for to Carry (A Novel in Five Parts)

Nora Robson was a writer living in Montreal.

Coming for to Carry is Lorris Elliott’s first novel. Shortly after its publication, the title rightly appeared on the short list for the Books in Canada Award for a First Novel. It is a great First. Elliott, a professor of English literature at McGill University, is also a musician and a playwright.

The novel is part mythical fable, part autobiographical satire. Elliott’s admiration for Wilson Harris’s Palace of the Peacock is perceived through the author’s use of poetic fantasy. Some sections move in syncopated rhythm, reminding us of his jazz background. This prose beat in the parts concerning Big Jay’s “big blue Nash” is reminiscent of Robert Penn Warren’s highway writing.

Coming for to Carry is Omoh’s theme song (a simple anagram for Homo) and it recurs throughout his story. Omoh leaves “the Rock” (Trinidad/ Tobago, for example, as Elliott himself did) to go to “the big land” (British Columbia, perhaps, like the author). His departure from the airport is important because he neglects to kiss dear Ma Poppo and his girlfriends, Janice and Mildred, goodbye. Throughout the novel, Omoh regrets his error and wishes subconsciously for the chariot (a modern jet plane) to “come for to carry” him home.

“The big land” is full of surprises for Omoh. It does not run with milk and honey, but is filled with rain and snow. After his university registration (let us say UBC, where Elliott studied for his MA) he becomes disoriented and ends up walking six miles in a steady drizzle, at which time he is arrested for jaywalking. One incident piles on top of another. The reader is alternately regaled and horrified by Omoh’s tales of culture shock and alienation during the two-year period. We laugh amiably at his reactions to nightclubs and strip joints where his friends hide their booze and are simultaneously amused and amazed at his friends, especially Big Jay and his phallic-shaped blue Nash.

Omoh’s counting of Curly, a Circe-type goddess, is one of the most persuasively written sections of the novel. His extreme dislike of North American rum and coke, and his revulsion for rare steak, another North American delicacy, almost defeat him. The situation produces dialogue containing many oxymorons and, although the setup is allegedly sexual, the circumstances defuse all possible action. Curly is reminiscent of Malamud’s sex goddess, Iris, in The Natural.

The novel is written in five parts, beginning with Omoh’s departure from “the Rock,” his two adventurous years in “the big land,” and ending with his return to Ma Poppo and the girls. The narrative shifts from first person to third person and at times is related in a rhythmic interior monologue. The afterword by Hugh Hood, Elliott’s Ph.D. thesis supervisor, is a useful commentary for English literature students. Coming for to Carry is the kind of first novel which provokes its readers to inquire “What next?”