Alison Pick's The Sweet Edge is a short and spare novel about a
twentysomething couple, Ellen and Adam, whose relationship has gone
awry after three years together. They spend the summer apart, Ellen
working at a boring job in a city she doesn't like and Adam taking
a long-dreamed-of canoe trip alone into the Canadian North.
That summary pretty much tells you what's annoying about these
characters, neither of whom I liked much at the beginning of the
novel. Adam is the poster boy for Self-Absorbed Jerks Afraid of
Committment, while Ellen is typical of the kind of woman I meet so
often in novels and so rarely in real life: passive, indecisive, a
bystander in her own life.
Things change during the novel, however. Adam's trip up North is
the classic man-against-the-wilderness-finding-yourself journey,
but there are twists he hasn't forseen: the trip forces him to
confront his own weakness and his need for other people. Meanwhile,
Ellen goes on her own journey of self-discovery without ever
leaving Toronto, though she does travel around it quite a bit. Her
voyage is made not in solitude but in community; the group of new
friends who help Ellen "find herself" are among the most engaging
characters in the book.
Starting out by disliking the major characters is not usually a
good sign for a book but by the end of The Sweet Edge I found
myself caring about Ellen and Adam in spite of their flaws. I was
interested to see how Pick would end the novel and I wasn't
disappointed (though a bit frustrated by a detail that, in a very
postmodern way, is left hanging at the end).
The language is one of the delights of The Sweet Edge. I'm not
always keen on novels by poets (Pick is best-known as a poet and
recent winner of the prestigious CBC literary award for poetry)
because too often the language takes centre stage, leaving plot and
characters to fend for themselves. Here, however, Pick's subtly
elegant prose is always used in the service of the story, so that
you never forget you're reading a novel -- a very well-written
novel, but not one that screams, "Look at my prose! How lovely it
is!" Rather, we're drawn to look through the clear window of Pick's
prose into the lives of two people who are flawed and fallible, but
who are also able to change.