Childhood

The love affair between a young black boy's wayward mother and a man who may or may not be his father forms the intriguing background to this enormously appealing first novel by Trinidadian-Canadian author Alexis (whose short-story collection, Despair, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize). ""I've been thinking about Love, you see,"" begins the first-person narrator, now in his early 40s, addressing his absent, unnamed inamorata shortly after the death of his mother, ""and theirs was the first and most puzzling romance I witnessed."" Katarina MacMillan, only 17 when her son is born, promptly deposits Thomas in the care of her forbidding mother, Edna, in their small hometown of Petrolia, Ontario. Edna ""was past the age of easy tolerance, and she was cantankerous,"" Thomas observes. ""Also, she used to drink a lot of dandelion wine."" Under her stern tutelage, Thomas grows up to be a book-loving, secretive boy. When his grandmother dies, the mother he knows only through legend suddenly arrives to claim him, and they are both soon abandoned roadside by Katarina's lover, the French-speaking Mr. Mataf. They must make a new life in Ottawa under the protection of a courtly dabbler in chemistry, Henry Wing, who initiates the boy into the secrets of alchemy. Thomas also learns about love and life by watching the games of power and romance that take place between Wing and his mother. Alexis often employs the apparatus of scientific research in order to convey Thomas's earnest searches for the truth; he breaks down memories into outlines, bulleted lists and footnotes, preferring the forms of proof to those of guesswork. The novel is an engagingly honest effort to order the stuff of a life, and it marks the maturation of an impressive new voice. Author tour. (Sept.)