Tragedy Two Ways

Sometimes a burr is a distraction that sticks to the fur of black bears and the fabric of trousers; other times it is an existential threat that holds a songbird by the wing and kills it. The difference, of course, is scale. To a bear, a burr is the size of one of its molars. To a thrush, a burr is the size of its head. To the characters of Brooke Lockyer’s debut novel, it is the size of a small town. “Unlike unassuming Paris, or the nearby village of Dublin,” writes Lockyer, “Burr lives up to its name. The prickly fruit is everywhere in this flat Southwestern Ontario town, clinging to socks and sleeves and hair.”

Set in 1994, Burr begins with the sudden heart attack and death of Henry Blackburn, father to morbid Jane and husband to bookish Meredith. In her grief, Meredith takes a long walk into the forest surrounding Burr, where she discovers something strange: “A bed in the middle of a thicket. A proper bed, with a curved wooden headboard, two plump...