Spring 2008 Volume 22 - No. 1 - BC BookWorld

31 BC BOOKWORLD SPRING 2008reviewsFICTIONTHUMPING JACKSChris F. Needham plays Lucy with the truth to unravel congenital violenceBY CHERIE THIESSENFalling from Heights by Chris F. Needham(Now or Never Publishing $21.95)You don’t want to messwith the three Jacks boys,Jonathan, Robert andJeremy. In Falling from Heights,none of them can sustain lastingrelationships.Jonathan, the elder by sixteenyears, is a sexual predator.Jailed earlier for his attacks onyoung girls, he has done his timeand now lives in a heritage homein a respectable Langley community;closely monitored 24/7by four full-time employees.Robert has left his secondwife, and a three-year olddaughter he has no interest in,in favour of impregnating oneof his high school students,whom he subsequently may haveassisted off the Knight StreetBridge. The partying studentSukhvinder, and her unbornchild, unsurprisingly didn’t survivethe plunge—or fall.Although he doesn’t drink,Robert loves to beat the hell outof guys in bars, he loves to watchhis twin brother, Jeremy, getplastered, and he doesn’t say noto a good toke. Jeremy, thedrunk, is the best of the three,although he’s a failure at work,relationships and life.Both university-educatedbrothers, Robert and Jeremy, are“temporarily” doing menial jobsin a smelly Delta fish feed plant.Unfortunately, Robert can nolonger teach school, not becauseof Sukhvinder—nobody knowsabout that yet—but because hepunched out the principal infront of his students. One wonderswhy this pugilistic charmerwould have ever chosen teachingchildren in the first place.Jeremy has reluctantly returnedto Vancouver from easternCanada where he has hadone largely unread, misogynistbook published. His return isprompted by a phone call fromhis father, with whom he has hada dicey relationship, telling himthat Robert, who is an army reservist,has been killed in a jumpwhile on a weekend trainingmission.The father tells him Robert’sparachute must have becomeentangled with that of a fellowjumper, one Corporal Sidhu,but when Jeremy returns andaccompanies his ailing father tothe airport, expecting to pickup a very small coffin, hisbrother limps off the plane.Turns out that Robert has miraculouslysustained only minorinjuries, as Sidhu cushioned hisfall.Unlike Sukhvinder, Roberthas survived his fall from heights.Both younger brothers, nowclose to 30, return to the familyhome with their Dad, ahome that is constantly losingground to a rapaciousravine. There has neverbeen a mother in the picture.Jon Sr. has told hisboys she died while on ahoneymoon with her secondhusband.The present-day storyof the Jacks family isposted as blog entrieson the Internet bysomeone with the penname of Lucy. Giventhat the only Lucy wemeet in the story is a catat the eldest son’sguarded residence, weare intrigued to learnmore.✫The twins and their relationshipfeel very credible,and the plot is engaging,so with all of this excitementgoingon, youwould think itwould be easyto get yankedquickly intothis novel. Infact, it’s astruggle atfirst, mostly becauseof theauthor’s stylisticchoice of intruding into thestory and because of his use ofconvoluted and lengthy paragraph-longsentences. Here’s anexample:Together Jeremy and his fathertried to get limping Robert into hisnow vacant, incessantly leaky condo—as mentioned, Robert’s wife hadtaken a recent leave of absence fromtheir relationship, taking with hertheir three year-old daughter—butwith his various minor injuries, togetherwith everything else presentlyfalling apart in his life, they thoughtbetter of it and decided to install himin his old room at his father’s house,Chris F.Needham:Delving intoviolence in thesuburbs ofVancouverthe very house Robert and Jeremy hadgrown up in.Later the author’s intrusivenesslargely disappears, especiallyonce the story ricochets tothe most overtly deviant son,Jonathan. But only about half ofthis novel is about this scary familyof four.✫Right from the beginning,interspersed with the Jacks family,we have another intriguingstoryline: A mysterious but fascinatingyoung woman, Birdie, iswriting letters and diary entriesfrom a voluntary “prison,” partof a well-paid controlled experimenton the effects of marijuanausage, a trial that tookplace in the early 1970s.It’s this half of Falling fromHeights that was evidently inspiredby real letters and eventsthat occurred at a governmentsanctioneddrug experiment inToronto in 1972.The letters from Birdie, someof which Jeremy finds in the familyhome, are 30 years old. Articulate,funny and insightful,Birdie’s writing pulls us in rightfrom the start and fortifies us forthe frequent ‘trips’ back andforth to the Jacks brothers. Wewant to know who Birdie is, andwhat she has got to do with thechaos and carnage in the livesof the Jacks twins.Needham’s combination of“Lucy’s” modern communicationmethod of blogging withthe somewhat passé action of letterwriting by Birdie makes fora welcome juxtaposition.Plots can sometimes benefitfrom being convoluted, as longas the author leaves us crumbsto find our way out of the maze,but there’s a great deal aboutFalling from Heights that is perplexing.Why has Needhamgone to so much trouble to caricatureJeremy’s drinking buddy,a well-known alcoholic actorwho played in a long-running televisionseries? And why is he includingreal events and peoplefrom Greenpeace?And what about those environmentalconflicts he introduces?Whoever would haveguessed that Jon Jacks, the onetime alcoholic and aimless fatherwe meet at the beginning,would also have been involvedin Greenpeace and environmentalactivism?And, of course, who really isthe mother of these twins andwhere the heck is she?Flashes of a Lexus, a missinggirl, and her no-good boyfriend,also keep flicking throughoutthe novel, piquing our curiosityand further knitting togetherthis dark story.Symbolism is everywhere,from the ravine’s encroachmenton the family yard, to the crackingcement in the fishpond, tothe unfinished treehouse forRobert’s daughter. PossiblyNeedham began writing as apoet before he wrote An InvertedSort of Prayer, his other novel,about an ex-hockey enforcer,that was published shortly beforethis one. 978-0-9739558-1-1Cherie Thiessen regularly reviewsfiction from Pender Island.fernie writers conference 0807.15 - 07.27Intensive workshops. 07.15 - 07.27. SCREENWRITING | FILM EDITING | SHORT STORY | POETRY | NOVELProfessional Writing Seminar. 07.25 - 07.27Previous participant registration and scholarship applications open early January 08. General registration February 01.08.ELK VALLEY REALTYwww.ferniewriters.org | keith@ferniewriters.org | 250.423.6132