These Are Their Stories

What exactly is Evie of the Deepthorn? This is the question posed on the book’s back cover. It’s the idea that follows the reader through three distinct but connected narratives. It’s a challenge that, even at the end of the novel, still percolates in the back of the mind.

Evie is, before anything else, the debut of André Babyn, a protegé of Miriam Toews. His first showing is an incredibly ambitious one. With multiple narrators and storylines, the book turns literary form on its head, filtering the story through several different structures, beginning with an introductory letter from the author himself. In constructing a narrative that loops back on — and even consumes — itself, Babyn has created something elusive that defies tidy characterization and even, in many respects, a review.

To the...