Good on Paper
Rachel Cantor
[Melville House]
Rachel Cantor’s second novel tells the story of middle-aged Shira, an ex-PhD, ex-translator and ex-writer, who has exiled herself from all of these pursuits to work a series of bizarrely banal temp jobs. Sitcom-style, Shira’s life is populated not only by her precocious daughter Andi and gay friend and co-parent Ahmad, but by a cast of wacky store-owners and coffee shop friends who inhabit her neighbourhood, her “Comfort Zone”. The book centres on a metatextual literary project: Shira is suddenly and cryptically asked to translate from Italian to English a reworking of Dante’s Vita Nuova, by invented Romanian Nobel prize-winning poet Romei.
Romei becomes an invasive absence in Shira’s life, badgering her with phonecalls delivered in “pizza-man English” and pushing the limits of the translator’s potential for textual fidelity. Cantor does a decent job of making language live. Written with curiosity and a generous spirit, the novel intersperses engaging reflections on linguistics, Dante, the Old Testament Song of Songs, and postmodern poetry with narratives of family, love, loss and exile. There is a lot to like, but the book’s flaws do grate. The reader may succeed in suspending disbelief around plot credibility, but it is difficult to warm to the self-conscious bohemian quirk, pretentiousness and hyper-sentimentality that mark the weakest moments. Still, the novel’s point is that authors are needy creatures, who tell messy, imperfect stories to seek connection, kinship and absolution from their readers. Met with a forgiving spirit, this book has much to offer.
Words: Gill Moore
