The texture, grit and pure narrative grace of this remarkable first novel by young Canadian short story writer, essayist and poet Heighton (Flight Paths of the Emperor; The Ecstasy of Skeptics, etc.) transform a coming-of-age story into something uncommon yet deeply familiar. Heighton chronicles the arduous artistic journey of the precocious but troubled Sevigne Torrins, who starts off by ditching a promising pugilistic career to follow his literary muse. The early chapters focus on his difficult relationship with his father, a former sailor drinking himself to death on the shores of Lake Superior, followed by a road-travel sequence that takes him to Egypt, where his mother has lived for years with her second husband. Most of the book, however, revolves around two romantic relationships, the first with a sexy, rabidly ambitious fellow writer, Una Sutherland, and the second and more lasting with a woman nearly 10 years older than Sevigne, 34-year-old singer Mikaela Chandler, whose biological clock is ticking with a vengeance. Heighton writes evocatively about the undercurrents of lust, creativity and ennui that shape the two situations. But he saves his most powerful work for the finale, when Sevigne isolates himself at his family's cottage on a remote island near Toronto, where a series of catastrophes reduce his winter writing retreat to a hovel and he contracts an infection that forces him to perform a grisly self-amputation. This is a remarkably accomplished, potent first novel in which Heighton explores the forces that shape the lives of artists, writing in a disarmingly natural voice that shifts effortlessly in range, from near-Lawrentian lyricism to blunt, gripping simplicity. In his progress from enthusiastic innocent, albeit with a complicated history, to someone older, wiser yet still "always working so hard at being alive," Sevigne convinces as few protagonists do. Author tour. (Feb. 25)
Forecast:Heighton is already an acclaimed writer in Canada, and this should be his breakout book in the U.S. It's a bit surprising that a work of this magnitude is being issued in paperback, but so long as that doesn't throw book review editors, it shouldn't hurt sales.
