Close to the Fire

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island and an honorary chief of the Mi’kmaq of Prince
Edward Island.

Set in a country house in winter, in rural maritime Canada, this
ambitious novella is about the crises in a man’s life.

The narrator is a small-town lawyer whose witty and self-deprecating
voice is a major attraction of the book. Years earlier, he had run away
with Orland’s wife. Now Orland, who is dying from diabetes, has come
to stay with them. As the narrator struggles with his guilt over the
Orland situation, in his imagination he sometimes assumes the role of
“wicked uncle” John Jasper, who may have murdered Edwin Drood in
Charles Dickens’s unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. As the
narrator considers how he would finish the Drood story, the day-to-day
crises of his own life—a major fire, Orland’s death, a new
baby—unfold in juxtaposition with the Dickens novel.

Strong delineation of character is evident in David Helwig’s portrait
of the narrator. Furthermore, a mastery of nonlinear structure is
evident in his ingenious shifts between present and past. A typically
postmodern touch are the ongoing allusions to Charles Dickens, in
particular to Edwin Drood. In brief, Helwig has produced a clever work
that demands to be read more than once.