Synopsis
Like Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, Anomaly explores the dynamics of female relationships in a Toronto that many people remember, but that no longer exists. Set in the 1970s as the city evolved into an international hub, the novel centers around four women: two sisters, Glynnis and Carol, just coming of age, their troubled mother, Mrs. Riggs, and an elderly neighbor, Miss Balls, whose most vivid memories are of her days as a young nurse in World War II. As the two girls struggle to navigate their stormy relationship, the events of a turbulent era are reflected in the lives of all four women. Each suffers a loss of innocence — and so too does the city. Detailed, emotionally complex, and rich with exceptionally well-drawn characters, Anomaly is a debut novel that lives up to its promise.
Reviews
Sisters Carol and Glynnis Riggs are as different as two girls can be: at age seven, Glynnis is a confident wisecracker, while eight-year-old Carol—an albino—conceals her outcast frustration behind a pudgy, teary, clumsy exterior. Her anger peaks one day, and she causes an accident that crushes her younger sister's leg. Now the sisters, both anomalies, must find ways to negotiate their fraught relationship as they suffer through their adolescence in mid-1970s Canada. Carol dyes her hair black, becomes death-obsessed and takes up with a punk rocker, while Glynnis contends with her permanently disabled leg and nascent lesbian feelings. Sections focusing on the girls' mother, Rowena, and her growing interest in the ministry are less compelling, as are those devoted to an elderly neighbor's memories of serving as a nurse during WWI. However, Fleming (Pool-Hopping and Other Stories) charts the sisters' progress with a sharp ear for the thoughts, language and cruelties of children and teens: there's nothing precious about these growing pains, and the two central characters are exquisitely drawn. (Sept.)
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Eminently readable, this tale brings to life an apparently typical middle-class family in suburban Toronto in the second half of the twentieth century. It also tells the story of Miss Balls, a close family friend whose happiest time was as a nursing sister in the war, when she discovered real love. Fleming's use of the varying female voices (cf. Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible) succeeds wonderfully in revealing just how untypical the family really is. To begin with, their middle child, Carol, is albino; how she acts out because of the endless teasing in her peer group has long-ranging effects on the rest of the family, especially on her sister, Glynnis. The novel opens when the sisters are eight and seven, and it takes them through the pain of childhood and its cruelties to the greater pain of adolescence, with first loves and the recognition of sexual identities. Strongly evoking time and place (cf. Ann-Marie MacDonald's The Way the Crow Flies, 2003), this first novel is a triumph of language and story. Maureen O'Connor
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