Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube

Misconduct of the Heart by Cordelia Strube

ECW Press, April 2020

Audiobook (18 hours; Dreamscape Media, 2020) read by Eve Passeltiner

A witty, wise novel about moving forward and opening your heart after experiencing trauma.

Stevie Tree lives in a "crappy Scarborough triplex with paint peeling off the stucco." She shares the tiny space with her son, Pierce, who was discharged from the Canadian forces after serving in Afghanistan.

        Gripping his head like it might explode, Pierce slid down the cabinets and sat on the cracked linoleum. "They're goat herders. They pray five times a day. Who the fuck made them the enemy?"

        I suggested the CIA, George W. and Mr. Cheney, but Pierce's face was a slammed door. I could feel it reverberating.

        He was never diagnosed with PTSD. To avoid paying him disability, Veteran Affairs decided he had a pre-existing mental disorder.

Pierce has night terrors that leave Stevie bruised. A cook at the restaurant where Stevie works as kitchen manager is concerned that one of these days, "That kid is going to fuck you up. Seriously." 

        I never think of him as my kid. I was the kid. My parents raised Pierce while I grew up playing musical fuckchairs and chain-drinking to steady the turbulence in my head.

Stevie was gang-raped by four men when she was in high school. The fact that Pierce was born as a result of that assault was a secret she kept from him as well as her parents. She also didn't tell him that he might be biracial, since his skin looks as white as hers. Meanwhile, a Black 4-year-old child, possibly Stevie's granddaughter, has been dumped on her parents' doorstep with a note for Pierce. To top it off, Stevie's parents have dementia.

        His cough drives me nuts. He hacks up Afghan dust laced with fecal particulate from porta-johns and Kabul's open sewage system. Shit dries up in 40-degree heat and becomes airborne. Most days the sky is brown.

        When he signed up he told me he was 'doing the right thing for once.' I told him it was George Junior's cash-grab poppy war. Naturally Pierce didn't want to hear this. That first Christmas he called my parents, not me. They were already losing bolts.

        "Why isn't he home?" they asked with the stunned look of the demented.

        "He's fighting a politically contrived and unjust war," I said.

        "Why?"

        "To satiate corporate greed. War's good for business. Ike said that. Remember Ike?"

        They chewed toast. They live on toast. I shut their stove down because they frequently forgot it was on and used it as a countertop. Peggy melted an electric kettle on it. Reggie decided the oven was a car part that needed oiling.

Darkly humorous situations abound with Stevie's parents, her neighbours, her creative writing class, and at work. The chain restaurant employs a motley crew, including a deranged penny-pinching general manager named Bob. He's the kind of guy who writes "ever present and always watching" on the schedule instead of his hours.

        "Bob," I say, "we need scrubbies."

        "I'm not buying you scrubbies."

        "Why not?"

        "Because your staff broke the ice machine."

        "How do you know it was my staff?"

        "Daniel says they drink Coke with ice non-stop. Maybe they don't have ice machines where they come from."

        "You can't not buy scrubbies because the ice machine is broken. You said yourself another reason we failed the office report is we are the dirtiest Chappy's. How are we supposed to become the cleanest Chappy's without scrubbies?"

        "If your staff can't respect the ice machine, why should I buy them scrubbies?"

Beneath the many day-to-day absurdities lie serious issues. War and its aftereffects. Sexual assault. Alcoholism. Longterm consequences of poor parenting skills. Poorly-paid immigrant labour. The characters feel one hundred per cent real. I felt like I was perched on Stevie's shoulder, cheering her on as she learned she actually is a decent human being, loveable and capable of caring.

Giller chances: HIGH. This appealing rabble-rouser certainly deserves to make the longlist, at least.

NOTE: This audiobook is in Hoopla, so look for it there if your public library subscribes to that database.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.