Hazard Zones

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

Hazard Zones is the second instalment of Maillard’s Raysburg series.
The first, Light in the Company of Women (1993), introduced the West
Virginia town of Raysburg (not, coincidentally, the author’s
birthplace) and was critically well received. Maillard currently chairs
the Creative Writing Department of the University of British Columbia.

Like its predecessor, Hazard Zones uses memory as a tool for
self-discovery and, as the main characters make their inward journeys
toward catharsis, it is memories that provide the fuel. Larry Cameron
and his wife, Cynthia, travel from a Boston suburb to Raysburg to visit
his ailing mother, only to find that they are too late—she has already
died. After making the necessary arrangements for cremation, Larry and
Cynthia must wait for the ashes to be returned from Pittsburgh. It is
during this lengthy wait that the memories come flooding back—memories
of both his mother and grandmother, of his alcoholic stepfather, and,
most significantly, of Johnny, his dead half-brother. Not to be outdone,
Cynthia, too, dredges up past failures and disappointments, many of them
sexual. A boyhood acquaintance, Jeff, and his wife, Linda, serve as
catalysts upon whom Maillard hangs much of his exposition.

There is a lot of brooding in this novel, much crying, and general
misery. What saves the plot from melodrama is Maillard’s insistence on
solid dialogue and character relationships. The synchronous miseries of
husband and wife feed off each other in believable ways; there is
support, there is anger, there is that sexual tension that couples
share. Maillard deserves to be read more widely. He is one of the
country’s better young novelists.