The novel focuses on three characters who meet by chance in the restaurant of a cheap motel. Tom is there to meet Claire with whom he’s hoping to reset an on-again, off-again relationship. Jacqueline is celebrating her one-year anniversary with her boyfriend; she wants to break up, but she has just discovered that she’s pregnant. Richard is attending his daughter’s university convocation, but he’s also pre-occupied with his disintegrating marriage.

While these three strangers are having breakfast, Gus, another diner, engages them in conversation. He asks a lot of questions but also talks about his life, especially his relationship with his wife Nellie. Though she is deceased, Gus speaks fondly about their years together raising a family. What he tells Tom, Jacqueline, and Richard has them reflecting on their pasts and pondering their futures.

Chapters alternate among the three characters. The book opens with three chapters, each introducing one of the protagonists. Then, in the fourth chapter, Tom walks into the restaurant and the first part of the conversation with Gus is detailed. The following chapter is a flashback to Tom’s childhood. In the sixth chapter, Jacqueline arrives for breakfast and the first part of the conversation with Gus is repeated. The subsequent chapter is a flashback to her childhood. In Chapter 8, Richard enters and the conversation is again reported before Chapter 9 flashes back to Richard’s adolescence. This format is repeated twice more. The repetition of chunks of conversation becomes tedious. The characters do react differently to what Gus says and the reader does become privy to their thoughts about the others, but the word-for-word reiteration is annoying.

A strength of the novel is characterization. Each of the main characters emerges as a complex person with a satisfactory backstory which explains their motivations. All of them are flawed, but they also possess redeeming qualities. Because of her childhood, Jacqueline, for example, is superficial, concerned with image and the opinions of others; she wants a boyfriend who is handsome and rich. On the other hand, she loves her mother very much. Sometimes, the characters behave in ways that make them unlikeable. Tom, for instance, is shallow; he judges everyone, especially women, on their physical appearance. Yet his desires to please his parents and to make his grandmother proud are admirable. Richard’s treatment of Arnaud is difficult to accept but were he not guilty and conflicted, he would not have acted in a way that resulted in the fateful accident.
Influenced by the conversation with Gus, the three protagonists experience epiphanies and make decisions that impact their futures. My issue is that I’m not convinced that one conversation can be so impactful. I did appreciate, however, that all three have reasons to change since they are at crucial points in their lives. The changes are realistic in that not everything becomes perfect. Not all issues in all relationships are resolved. For instance, Richard admits that his marriage “still wasn’t perfect” and his “relationship with Luc remained strained.”
I appreciated some of the touches of humour. Some of Gus’ stories are funny, but I appreciated the lighter touches of comedy: When Tom first sees Jacqueline, he thinks, “The girl was a five or a six at best in the looks department. While she was thin and well-dressed, her facial features were asymmetrical, and she was extremely pale. . . . Tom saw her glance at him out of the corner of his eye a few times, which wasn’t unusual. Women tended to hit on him wherever he went. Keep dreaming, he thought. She definitely wasn’t his type.” Jacqueline notices Tom “sneak a glance at her. As if, she thought. It wasn’t that he was unattractive. He wore a leather jacket and fitted dark-wash jeans with what looked like an expensive haircut. And he definitely works out, she noted. But he was too old.” Not only are their thoughts very revealing of their priorities, but the dramatic irony is perfect.
There are a couple of style issues that irritated me. It is accepted practice to write a character’s thoughts in italics. It is aggravating, therefore, to read sentences like, “This might be it, he thought” and “Well not this time, Jacqueline thought” and “My daughter’s age, Richard thought.” Italics indicate internal thought so adding “he thought” is redundant. Secondly, the novel is set in southwestern Ontario so using “college” to mean “university,” as Americans do, is annoying. Arnaud does “his college homework” but he attends university?

This book has some of the weaknesses found in debut novels, but it has its strengths, especially characterization. I would certainly read another offering from this writer.

Note: I received a copy of the book from the author in return for an honest review.

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