There was a kids’ show years ago that had a puppet who sang This is the song that never ends, it goes on and on my friends… That singing lamb never shut up. I sing it to myself sometimes, like halfway through Nairne Holtz’s second book, This One’s Going to Last Forever. Maybe because the title paraphrases it. Or maybe because the book reminded me of my brother-in-law who won’t stop talking. While the details of the conversation may occasionally be interesting, the substance is just never there. So my eyes glaze over and I dig in for the long haul.
In this collection of short stories and a novella, Holtz trots out a mangy crew of characters around whom revolve tales of love lost, anaemically fought for, then lost again. Nicky works in a parking garage and has a crush on Nathalie, a supposedly straight chick. She goes for the chase but loses the girl when she comes off too macho. A small-town gay Elvis impersonator performs drive-through marriages, and sleeps with a straight man on the side. Anna has lost her leg because her girlfriend crashed their car, but now the only person who offers her anything close to genuine love is a suburban man with an amputee fetish. Clara is a naive student who finds herself negotiating fault lines between extremes of both love and politics. Kelly and Sonya are lovers for whom boredom and bickering are both resolved by heroin.
Intriguing characters all, but they rattle around in settings that are more bone than flesh. Except for the immediate dilemmas of the plots, characters are described rather than inhabited. Many of them stand in for wincingly facile caricatures: in “Knives and Forks,” the narrator is visiting Lou’s apartment and is surprised to discover that “although Lou was a lesbian, her offerings were not politically-minded: there was nothing local, organic, fair trade, or vegan on display.”
Throughout the stories a code of identity politics is used as shorthand, replacing original description or commentary: apartments are described as either bourgeois or bohemian, hairstyles are markers of social order, and attractiveness is measured against reality TV. While in some hands these would be the tools of a biting social critique, Holtz merely cuts her losses and moves on to the next quick quip.
Perhaps hoping for a bit of gravitas, the Polytechnic killings pop up in the middle of “Are You Committed,” the novella of the collection. Clara, Mike and Bruno, roommates as well as co-workers at the McGill Daily, conduct some predictable soul-searching. Mike is sure he would have come to the women’s rescue, Bruno collapses into self-pity, and Clara retreats from them both, exploring the politics and the lesbians at the Women’s Union. She falls for a woman but the affair sours because neither is willing to truly commit, so she returns to her old roommates and renews the lease for another year.
The era and student politics of that period are nicely captured, and there are some sweet turns of phrase (“The double-peck could not have been gentler, yet Clara felt it like an indent.”), but the overall effect is glib. The killings, for example, serve their purpose and two pages later are dropped and not brought up again.
In interviews Holtz has described her dedication to writing and the discipline it takes to actually produce, criticizing those who have chosen comfort over art. This is her second book, the first being The Skin Beneath, a sort of lesbian mystery novel. She also co-edited the anthology No Margins: Writing Canadian Fiction in Lesbian. Discipline and dedication she has in spades.
But to those two I would suggest adding depth. Without it you’re just another singing lamb.
The launch of Nairne Holtz’s This One’s Going to Last Forever is happening at the Pink Room at Thomson House, 3650 McTavish on Monday, May 25 at 7pm.
Leila Marshy has been published in a number of literary journals such as Descant, Grain, Fireweed, as well as some anthologies, including Best Canadian Stories (Oberon Press).
