Avian Games

The title of this first novel raises the obvious questions—who is Darren and what effect will he have on the women we meet on page one? Creelman opens the story with Heather’s visit to Benny at the hospital. She is on edge, visiting her married lover and worrying about the arrival of his wife, Isabelle. In a few short paragraphs, the tension is built. This is not Benny’s story, however, as it is clear from the outset that Benny is dead, his lifespan compared unfavourably to that of an injured puffin. This story belongs to the women and, of course, to Darren.

So who is Darren? While I was intrigued with the Heather-Benny-Isabelle triangle, I waited for Darren, hoping that he was the one who could rescue these two exhausted, injured women. Isabelle and Heather know about each other, and they circle the periphery of each other’s lives, each a vague threat on the horizon that could swoop in and bear down on the other.

Darren, it turns out, is a blessing in the lives of several women and a vast number of damaged seabirds. Darren is the man next door to Isabelle, her co-shopper who cruises the aisles of the Price Club, almost swallowing his own tongue as Isabelle fills her cart with unneeded items that could be purchased more cheaply elsewhere. Darren is Jeanette’s big brother, with whom she lives, as Jeanette is afraid of the dark. Darren is an ex-roommate of Mandy, Heather’s sister, and this is how he is absorbed into Heather’s life.

In contrast, Benny behaves like a child—demanding, self-absorbed, scared of being possessed by a woman. Heather realizes later, after he accuses her of wanting to own him that, in fact, her wants were not about possession but rather being able to count on Benny. “It was about expectation,” expectation that he has failed to meet.

Heather meets Darren after Benny has died, enlisted by her sister Mandy to stalk him as research for a short story. They follow Darren as he searches the Avalon peninsula for injured and dead seabirds, trying to accurately count those poisoned by oil and save those that might recover. Mandy eventually loses interest in Darren as a catalyst for writing a story about desire, but for Heather, Darren becomes an elusive target of her attention, if not immediately her own desire. She convinces him that she has taken up bird watching as she integrates herself into his life.

Creelman’s writing is subtle and she trusts her readers to figure out much of the thesis, while giving us enough clues to decipher her meaning. Heather is large with dead Benny’s child when Darren meets her. Isabelle is overwhelmed with raising Cooper, dead Benny’s legitimate child, who refuses to speak of his father in the past tense and slithers around on his belly, periodically incapable of walking. Darren observes how challenging it is for Isabelle to raise Cooper alone, noting that in birds monogamy takes teamwork, but is compromised by “death, desertion, betrayal.”

Creelman bounces in and out of the heads of the people who matter, mostly staying out of Benny’s thoughts. I am glad for this. Benny is an unlikable man, because I know his secrets. On the outside, seeing him at Cub Scouts or the grocery store he might seem, as Newfoundlanders say, “the best kind.” The readers see Benny only from the perspectives of the two women who love him and his child, for this is all that really matters about Benny. In their eyes, he fails, although they do not hate him for this.

Isabelle first meets Benny when she is a teenager and babysits him for an evening. He is a compulsive, uncontrollable and inattentive child and she refuses to care for him any more. It is too bad she does not see that he will always be that child when she meets him later in life. As he is dying, Benny begs her not to euthanize Inky, their ancient and incontinent dog. Isabelle complies, just as she complies with his need not to put down their equally messy, dying marriage.

Creelman has built an engaging plot and her characters are complex and compelling. Her language is lean and lovely. A dog’s ears are described as “soft tents rising.” Pack ice moves to expose “water like a strip of belly glimpsed unexpectedly.” The dialogue is pitch perfect, capturing the local dialect without hammering it into a stereotypical slot. The geography is subtle but accurate, not overwhelming the story as a mythical character in its own right, as Newfoundland often does. She uses the lives of birds to build much of her thematic structure and her hand is steady and even as she does—light as the bones of a bird itself.

I loved Darren, a man who could simply do the necessary thing at the right time. In a world of denial, disrespect and lies, here comes Darren, the guy who will buy you an inflatable swimming pool for your backyard, just because he thinks it might please your child. He has no hidden agenda, despite what his sister Jeanette thinks.

The plot is constructed around how this mild-mannered wildlife biologist will be the catalyst that changes Isabelle’s and Heather’s lives. Creelman explains the Bruce effect, the phenomenon whereby a fetus is reabsorbed into the mother’s body when she is exposed to an unknown male. Has this been observed in humans, Heather queries? Darren asks her if she is following him in an attempt to reabsorb the baby. Clearly a parallel is being hinted at, but it never becomes an obvious or heavy-handed device. I will not reveal what the Darren effect is, for that would be unfair to both Creelman and the reader.

Creelman creates a redeeming character in Darren—a man who can step into a fouled and half-abandoned nest and make it a home. Her optimism and belief in human potential gives her the courage to let Darren, in the end, soar like a bird.