Demi-Gods

August 28, 2017
Robertson’s vivid but somewhat choppy debut novel (following her short story collection, Wallflowers) is set in the 1950s, and moves between a summer cabin on a British Columbia island and California. When nine-year old Willa’s mother’s new lover’s two sons come from California to visit Salt Spring Island, Willa and her sister Joan’s lives are transformed. Joan, 12, is immediately attracted to and later pairs off with the older brother, Kenneth, who is about 15 at the start of the novel, while 11-year old Patrick captivates and sometimes repels Willa. Willa’s attraction to Patrick leads him to wield a special and somewhat sinister power over her, and as they grow up, the sexual tension and silent power struggles engulf not just this pair but also the adults. One of the novel’s strengths is that it doesn’t see teenage sexuality as something to be feared; it beautifully captures the mixture of excitement, enjoyment, and alarm that accompanies discovery and sets it against a series of sunwashed, Instamatic-filtered summers. Robertson’s short fiction has won a Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and her strengths at that length appear here too: wonderful cinematic detail, precise character observation, and pithy insights into the strong relationship between the two sisters. But novels require something more, and this one falls short of feeling cohesive, with too many characters coming across as shadowy or sketchy. The various episodes, sometimes separated by years, are not convincing enough to work as fragments of a whole. Agent: Karolina Sutton, Curtis Brown.

Starred review from February 19, 2018
Set in both British Columbia and Southern California, Robertson’s searing debut novel (following the story collection Wallflowers) is a richly layered coming-of-age story exploring the thrills and dangers of a young girl named Willa and her adolescent sexual awakening. The novel takes the form of an impressionistic montage of Willa’s memories, in which she retrospectively interrogates her formative years, beginning in the summer of 1950 when she is nine years old. Willa’s hard-drinking and distant mother invites her Californian boyfriend and his two sons, Kenneth and Patrick, to stay at the family’s Salt Spring Island, B.C., beach house. Willa and her 12-year-old sister, Joan, are left to fend for themselves while the two parents are largely distracted by their own bickering, and while Joan and Kenneth form an immediate bond—they will marry only seven years later—Willa and Patrick’s relationship develops over the subsequent decade through a series of increasingly fraught and experimental sexual encounters and shared secrets, culminating in a devastating tragedy off the San Diego coast that severs their intimate yet often twisted bond. Willa’s memories, from the vantage point of four decades after the accident, map her gradually becoming aware of her own body and how the repercussions of untamed desire can shape futures. Robertson’s deliciously enigmatic style is the perfect analogue to Willa’s absorbing yet deeply haunting journey of self-discovery.