Reviewed by Jerry Levy
Each year in Japan, thousands of people simply decide to walk away from their lives and disappear from society. Live anonymously elsewhere, under assumed names, far removed from any friends or family. They are known as Jouhatsu, meaning ‘evaporated’, and they escape from circumstances they could no longer endure. Debt, marital discord, loss of employment, and death of a spouse, are thought to be some of the reasons. Stealing away in the dead of night with the help of the Yonge-ya, essentially fly-by-night shops, they relocate to slum areas of Tokyo, not recognized as official municipalities of the city, where they lead threadbare existences (often working as day labourers for the yakuza, the Japanese mafia). Families left behind occasionally engage private detective agencies to trace the missing person, but the process is said to be difficult and expensive, and many families end up giving up their search.
Abby, the protagonist in Catherine Black’s novel Blessed Nowhere, does something similar to the Jouhatsu. Beset with grief, she decides to leave her old life, her mother, sister, dog, and the worthless father of her child (although he was a non-factor in her life anyway), and begin anew elsewhere. Go on a road trip, with no plans on returning to her home, and with no firm destination in mind. As she says: “So I kept on. Wandered.”
The novel begins with the Prologue In Medias Res, the Latin phrase for “in the midst of things.” Right in the middle of the story. Here we are introduced to the unnamed narrator/protagonist, now living in Tadeo, a small Mexican town that has endured months of suffocating heat. But she tells herself that she’ll return home once she figures things out. Or at least, that’s the lie she prefers to live with. Through her, we quickly learn of two hippie girls, Vula and Sue: “Just two of our big nomadic tribe of outcasts and fuckups, unwashed and unlovely and unloved.” Like them, all the people in the town long for is relief from the drought, for the skies to crack open and the rains to come. Which is precisely what happens, but only briefly.
And when the downpour finally abates, a cab pulls up in front of a hotel where our protagonist resides. Out steps a “collection of separate parts,” small nonsensical parts that comprise her confused mother. At this point, the reader is left asking themselves exactly what is going on: Who is this narrator, and what is she doing in this Godforsaken place? Why has she run away, and from where? And why has her mother chased her down? Beginning the story in the middle of the action, the way it does, arouses a multitude of questions in the minds of readers, enticing them to read further.
As the novel progresses, we learn that our narrator’s name is Amy. Haunted by the death of her son, Joseph, she buys a decrepit $500 car that comes with a twist tie sticking out from the ignition key, tucks a buck knife into the glove box, and simply…disappears. Or rather, travels south into the U.S., eventually taking I-83 (dubbed The Road to Nowhere). Along the way, she shears off all her hair in a truck stop washroom, seemingly obscuring her identity. And, as might be expected, her jalopy, perhaps exasperated with belting out endless Patsy Cline country songs, breaks down en route. Fuelled by grief, Abby walks, hitchhikes, and eventually buses it into Tadeo, her ultimate “nowhere” destination. It is here that Abby settles, where she will become one of the walking wounded. Lost, unknown. She describes it: “You know the feeling. Everyone knows it. You wake up, and you could be anywhere, or anyone. Your whole identity, your whole past and all you’ve ever been and known and needed is gone and there’s this kind of itchy panic as your mind stumbles around in the dark like a drunk feeling the walls for a light switch.” Powerful.
The novel reminds one of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. A marriage of the three, perhaps. Like Kerouac’s novel, Black brings the reader on a road trip with her. And Toole’s novel, similar to Black’s, has a litany of odd characters. As for Didion’s non-fiction book, written following the death of her husband, it incorporates what she calls “magical thinking,” the idea that if someone hopes for something enough, that an unavoidable event, like a death, can actually be averted. She reports magical thinking in that she cannot give away her husband’s shoes after his death, thinking he would need them when he returned. (Abby undergoes many similar instances of this type of thinking as she grieves over Joseph, looking in basement windows for him, buying a birthday cake and coloured candles for him…all this…because, well, “just in case.” And, of course, thinking she could have saved him in the end if only she had done things differently). While resembling these mentioned books, Blessed Nowhere is very much unique in its own right, separate and distinct from them all.
We would be remiss if no mention was made of the weather in Tadeo. The insidious heat infiltrates everyone’s lives there, adding depth and realism into the storyline. It is, as if, a character in its own right, infused with meaning and symbolism, ultimately mirroring the inner emotional landscape of the people. There is mention of “wet armpits,” “breathless heat,” of sweating bodies, and of being unable to sleep because of the heat. When Abby’s mother arrives in town, she is so overwhelmed by it that she opens the freezer to the fridge and sticks her head inside! But as might be expected, the heat brings with it sickness: “During the hottest week in Tadeo, we were all sick. Nearly all of us. The cloud cover had settled above the valley and kept the heat under it like sweat under blankets.”
Despite the weather, the town pulses with energy and throbs with life. There is dancing, laughter, music, drinking, food. Strings of coloured lights droop over the main street. Children play soccer and run unfettered in the streets. Balloon vendors are chased after by the young ones. Vitality, merriment, and celebration abounds.
Black does a wonderful job of making us feel deeply for Abby. The latter’s life is spinning wildly out of control – her son has died, she lost her waitressing job, she can’t locate the father of her child, is badgered by her mother, and she buys a wreck of a car that breaks down. Moreover, Abby loved her son dearly and is beside herself with grief, something readers can certainly commiserate with. And her road trip away from it all, to escape and try to make sense of everything, of her life, is also understandable.
Black deals with sorrowful events gracefully and with sensitively. The questions that arise in the novel are: Can Abby find peace in Tadeo? Can she find hope amidst this colourful array of off-beat characters? And finally, can she somehow reappear intact following her disappearance?
Blessed Nowhere won the Guernica Prize for fiction, and there’s a reason for that – the novel is strikingly good. A true page-turner and one that is highly recommended.
Blessed Nowhere is published by Guernica Editions.
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