Help Me, Jacques Cousteau

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

“The bride-to-be is holding her wedding dress up high, to keep it out
of the snow, and you can clearly see her elaborate black panties through
the tight white hose. The sight reminds me of someone’s face crammed
against a window.” This is the kind of hilarious, head-on prose Gil
Adamson manages to sustain through 13 linked short stories.

The stories are told from the viewpoint of a young girl named Hazel,
who is part of a modern Canadian family foundering three generations
deep in dysfunction. Unlike many coming-of-age stories, no whinge of
self-pity or recrimination mars the tone here. Hazel knows that her
relatives are grotesque, but she suffers them as they are and asks only
to be suffered back.

The text is printed in a narrow-column format reminiscent of a tabloid
newspaper article. Each short story consists of small clusters of
paragraphs that are sushi-sized vignettes in themselves. These devices
allow Adamson to wield her powers of observation and wit alternately
like an ice pick and like a chain saw, carving out a family portrait
that is finely detailed and yet cuts to the bone. Fortunately, it is the
funny bone that Adamson most often exposes.