BURR by Brooke Lockyer
BURR
by Brooke Lockyer
Nightwood Editions, 2023; 288 pages; $22.95
Reviewed by Gerilee McBride
I have to admit, after reading the initial synopsis for BURR it was the cover that ultimately convinced me to take a chance on this coming-of-age book about loss from first-time novelist Brooke Lockyer. A book with such a striking cover design, I decided, cannot be boring. And I was right. It’s not a thriller per se, pulling me ahead before I finish each paragraph, but neither is it a slow slumber of a read. BURR is something resembling a lyrical fairytale with everyday characters encountering otherworldly situations.
The book begins almost as the death of husband and father, Henry, ends — it’s been weeks since the funeral and approaching time for thirteen-year-old Jane to go back to school in the fall. Jane’s mother Meredith isn’t quite ready to resume her job at the library especially after finding a perfectly made bed in the middle of the forest. She begins to spend more and more time there, eventually moving Henry’s things out to the woods too. Each in their own pockets of grief, Meredith doesn’t notice when Jane takes up a friendship of sorts with Ernest, a Boo Radley-type character, whose long-ago witnessing of the accidental drowning of his sister has turned him into the town’s living spectre.
Told in alternating chapters from the point of view of each character, the story vacillates between the past and present. Memories of life with Henry and resurrected childhood memories from Jane, Meredith, and Ernest are peppered with those of the small town of burr itself, who also has its own voice within the novel. The burr chapters feel a trifle mediocre as they read like newspaper clippings telling the history of the town and its influence on its present-day citizens. I wanted the town to have more of a personality, be more gossipy, have stronger opinions. As it stands, those snippets become incidental compared to the pinnacle moment of the novel when Jane and Ernst abscond to Toronto (a mere two-hour train trip from burr) to attend a seance. Police become involved, the town’s fears and suspicions regarding Ernest are kindled, and Meredith is snapped out of reverie to find her missing daughter.
Many meaningful meanderings occur while Jane, Ernest, and Meredith are in Toronto, and they are each transformed by their experiences. What stands out in this book is that the death part of the story, the main attraction, is told in a way that is very real, without platitudes, and utterly fathomable. BURR is a novel of fantasy staked to the rough worn bark of a tree in a forest growing next to a carefully made bed, holding the clothes of your dead loved-one. In other words, utterly transmutable in its telling.