The Education of AubreyMcKee by Alex Pugsley
The Education of Aubrey McKee
by Alex Pugsley
Biblioasis, 2024; 318 pages; $24.95
Reviewed by Patrick Mackenzie
The Education of Aubrey McKee is the second novel by Alex Pugsley to feature titular first-person narrator Aubrey McKee. The first eponymously-titled book, essentially a bildungsroman, follows Aubrey as a youth growing up among a cohort of well-educated and privileged Haligonians who spend a lot of time walking, talking, and getting drunk. But where Aubrey McKee (biblioasis, 2020), is presented as a mostly care-free youthful booze-fuelled romp, The Education of Aubrey McKee explores the growing demands of adulthood and the cares that come with it: careers, success, failure, relationships, heartache, disillusionment. This isn’t to say that the novel is a downer; it is written in a similar style to its predecessor — one that is conversational, witty, and highly entertaining.
The Education of Aubrey McKee and Aubrey McKee are stand alone novels that can be enjoyed separately. In this volume however, we find Aubrey living in Toronto where he is pursuing a graduate degree in chemistry. Despite being a chemist, Aubrey spends a lot of time socializing with writers and other humanities types. In fact, it is at a book launch party where Aubrey encounters for the first time the beautiful PhD candidate and poet Gudrun Peel. Gradually, the two form a romantic pair, the convolutions and machinations of which form the large majority of the novel. It’s made clear to the reader that the relationship between the two has long since failed and Aubrey is essentially writing a memoir about his time with Gudrun in an effort to interrogate himself and his feelings and understanding of a person who, in the end, despite all her fucked-upness, as well as his, he really loved.
The second installment in the Aubrey McKee saga could have just as easily been titled Gudrun Peel, for she is both object and subject of Aubrey’s memoir. The initial stages of their relationship unfold through the eyes of a smitten young man: “outside, her face was flushed and warm from the party.” But Gudrun Peel is anything but a passive receptacle for the male gaze. While talking about the 1964 film Zorba the Greek that switches to a general discussion on society-wide misogyny, Gudrun says, “Women in this culture, they’re not supposed to have an original thought. They’re not supposed to say uncomfortable things. They’re supposed to act polite and smell nice and dress as sexy cats on Halloween... [S]omtimes I’m reminded how deeply the masculine epistemology is embedded in our society and it makes me fucking crazy.” As the story progresses and Gudren and Aubrey’s relationship deepens, Aubrey switches career tracks, drops out of his graduate program, and becomes a writer himself, churning out short plays for the alternative theater scene among other things. Frustrated also by her lack of progress with her dissertation, which has already been rejected once by her fossilized and clueless supervisors, Gudrun ditches her PhD program — but soon finds herself a rising star in the Toronto media landscape. The sudden change in Gudrun’s fortunes marks the beginning of the end of their relationship. Aubrey has to endure male insecurity: “I was living with a woman who was becoming famous and I was confused by the fluctuations in our life and times.” And Gudrun fears she’s becoming just another schill for a system she has always despised: “Jesus Christ,” she says. “My life is shit. Because what am I doing?... I’m turning into one of those idiots. A talking head. A pundit. And say I do get a series? I’ll just be some bitch in the bullshit media world.”
But all is not lost for our two protagonists. Ending with a poem written by Gudrun and a short play presumably written by Aubrey, the two pieces, operating from the perspective that time affords, point to the enduring nature of friendship and the fundamental importance of relationships for our well-being — no matter how fraught.