All I Ask by Eva Crocker

All I Ask by Eva Crocker
House of Anansi, August 2020

A sexy, realistic portrayal of the complicated lives of contemporary women in their twenties.

The first-person narrator is Stacey, a shy and awkward aspiring actor. She has part-time jobs that barely pay enough to get by in her shared accommodations in St John's, Newfoundland. Her story opens with a memorable scene, that of police storming in through the front and back doors with a warrant.

        They took my computer and phone so they could copy the contents. They called it a mirror image. They said it was the fastest way to prove I wasn't the suspect and also I didn't have a choice.

Friends and family also have stuff going on in their lives, yet they are a source of support as Stacey copes with having no access to internet or her phone. Viv is Stacy's best friend since childhood.

        I've never been to mass in my entire life. Most of what I know about the Bible I learned from Jesus Christ Superstar, starring Ted Neeley. From the time we were seven until we were about ten, Viv and I rented that movie over and over again. That one and Titanic. We would rewind and fast-forward Jesus Christ Superstar to find our favourite songs. On the screen, Jesus and his disciples walked backwards through the desert, chopped up by two thick lines of static.
        We loved the high priests. We wrapped ourselves in navy sheets and stalked back and forth across the coffee table singing along, each of us taking a specific role. Viv hated Jesus, she hated his lank blond hair and she thought his voice was whiny. When he stormed through the temple and smashed a slowly rotating rack of mirrors she sighed. "What a drama queen."

Eva Crocker's genius in this novel is how real everything seems. The psychological acuity, the mood, the voice. In the next passage, Stacey meets a butch lesbian named Kris for the first time. The attraction is immediate and mutual.

        Viv introduced Kris before I could come up with anything: "This is Kris, she's a poet; this is Stacey, she's my best friend and an actor."
        "I don't know if I'd call myself a poet," Kris said.
        "Why not? You write poetry," Viv said.
        "I work at Ready to Ride. I repair bikes, pedal bikes," she said.
        I threw my coat on the post at the foot of the stairs and held up my wine. "I need a glass."
        Viv followed me to the kitchen and tried to ask how I was feeling. I stretched up on tiptoe, reaching for the only glass left in the cupboard. Her eyes were too wide. She was high.
        "I don't want to talk about that," I said. "And don't tell people I'm an actor."
        "Okay."
        "Is Holly here?" I asked. "Have you heard from her?"
        "I texted her, haven't heard back," Viv said.
        "Are you doing drugs tonight?"
        "Yeah."
        "Do you have more?" I filled the glass to the rim and hid my wine behind the bottles of olive oil and vinegar on the counter.
        "Ask Heather," Viv said.
        We all got too wasted to make it elsewhere. All night we were finding each other, gearing up to leave, someone was just finishing a cigarette and then someone really had to pee and then we'd be sucked back into the party. Hauled into a conversation or down to the basement where people were dancing to someone's favourite song, handed a fresh beer.

The police bureaucracy is an ongoing hurdle. At the station, when Stacey is finally allowed to regain her electronic possessions:

        "Who looked through my hard drive?"
        "Not me -- trained officers. Good people who have been doing this work for a long time."
         I tried to pull myself back into the room, to focus.
        "What makes them good?"
        "Pardon?" Constable Bradley asked.

The idiosyncrasies of people. The abuse of power by law enforcement. The politics surrounding the controversial Muskrat Falls dam project. Life is happening in this novel. There are missteps and betrayals. There are the lies we tell ourselves. There are ramifications to actions. There are sustaining friendships. There are uncertainties and surprises. It's all there. I understand why the Giller jury chose this for their longlist.

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This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I have been reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible. 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.