I was reading some of C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image while munching my morning Raisin Bran when I came across this passage:

"This I believe to be a stroke of calculated and wholly successful art. We are made to feel as if we had seen a heap of common materials so completely burnt up that there remains neither ash nor smoke nor even flame, only a quivering of invisible heat."

He was referring to how Boethius ends his De Consolatione Philosophiae, but the description, all that talk of fire and heat, made me think of the novel I'd just finished reading. A fascinating novel that features a fire-dancing, dragonish man who consumes his sons, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's Perfecting is one of the best novels I've read this year.

The narrative follows Canadian Martha Moore on a journey into the past via New Mexico after she discovers a Browning pistol in the room of her lover/spiritual leader Curtis Woolf. Curtis came from a family of lapsed Mormons, the son of the fire-dancing Hollis Woolf, and his escape to Canada thirty years ago created a void in his life that he subsequently filled with the Family at Soltane, a re-imagined Edenic community of believers. A pseudo-Christian, Mormon-influenced group of believers who find the way to Christ through the body, through light, bees, but mostly through Curtis.

We are told very little about where Martha came from. It's as if she was created by Curtis. And, in a way, she was. Her journey from Eden, Curtis's salvation/damnation, the undercurrent hum of bees and trickle of the Pecos, kept this reader turning pages long after she should have been asleep.

Peopled with vivid characters who harbour truly complex beliefs, fears, or obsessions that mingle and clash against each other, this story is well worth the read. Fishing, violence, love, vengeance, it has it all. From the bird-like Martha who dredges up the bones of the past, to the scaly Hollis who is the quintessential possessive parent, the characters live and breath and take you right along with them on the journey to discover what really happened to Curtis's half-brother Edgar, and the redemption/revenge tie that binds all these siblings and half-siblings together.

And it's not just in characterization that Kuitenbrouwer displays great skill. This narrative is layered with clever metaphor, timely allusions, interesting perspectives. Fishing (specifically lures) play a role, the fear of snakes (fitting for a narrative that includes a new Eden), bees and honey, to name the obvious ones. The imagery of Christianity threads in and out of the story in ways that not only do not detract, but illuminate and draw the reader in. At the same time, this is certainly not a work that presents Christianity or the spiritual interpretations extrapolated therefrom by the 'Family' (or Curtis) as either negative or positive. There is no obvious authorial intrusion. It's all about the characters and their responses to each other. I.e. it's expertly managed.

What a great read. The more I think about it, the more impressed I become with how Kuitenbrouwer juxtaposes the idyllic Canadian commune (that is, in reality, less than idyllic) against the parched New Mexican landscape. Her use of the weather, too, should not go unnoticed. And fire, heat, and light. This is a book that will keep you thinking for a good long while.

And did I mention there was sex? Sex and salvation are conflated by Curtis and confused by Martha and the results are both intriguing and tragic. The final image will stick with you long after you close the book. If you read only one new Canadian novel this year, I'd recommend this one.