1968 Genius brother, dead sister, MacGuffin, oh my!

Echo Lane
by Sandra Kelly

Edmonton: Stonehouse Publishing, 2023
$22.00 / 1988754453

Reviewed by Jessica Poon

*

Echo Lane by Invermere’s Sandra Kelly is an emotionally tense and compelling novel. 

The protagonist, Patsy, has lived an undeniably difficult life. Though she lives in Calgary, much of the present is occupied by thoughts of her past in the fictional town of Lazy River, Ontario. The family legacy, almost unrelentingly, seems to be trauma: alcoholism, more children than can be cared for, poverty, and violence. Patsy is an English teacher with a depressed genius brother in a coma. And, of course, there’s Kathleen, her perfect, if dead sister. 

Patsy is quasi-estranged from her mother, Bev, but also pays for Bev’s prohibitively expensive rehabilitation. She has a friend with benefits, or to use her words, a relationship that is “more than a transaction but less than a marriage.” She is a homeowner, thanks to Kay Gallagher, a woman who hired Patsy, barely twenty, to be a housecleaner, with full knowledge of Patsy’s immense baggage in the form of a brother kidnapped—altruistically—from Bev. 

Now, Kay is dead and there is immense pressure for Patsy to give up her home in favour of condos. Patsy tries not to think about Kathleen, but Kathleen continues to show up in Patsy’s dreams, the way dead people do. The role Patsy played in Kathleen’s death is something she keeps to herself. 

It’s not exactly a recipe for a sitcom, and yet, Echo Lane does have something in common with Chuck Lorre’s sitcom, Mom, with the most significant similarity being that characters reveal undeniably traumatic memories with relative nonchalance. That, and the prevalence of alcoholism. There are select moments of pathos that stand out, because they are not continuously screaming for pity. The melodrama is never overdone, if at all. It is a truth, reluctantly acknowledged, that however terrible a character’s life, we have a harder time feeling sorry for them if all they do is pity themselves. 

Patsy is easy to feel empathy for because she is disarmingly good at coping.

When Nora Stone knocks on Patsy’s door, ostensibly for social reasons, she’s there to give Patsy critical information about Kathleen. But not before befriending Patsy and confusing the hell out of her, and the reader. Is Nora a figment of Patsy’s imagination? How does she know so much? Although Patsy is initially reluctant, she and Nora become fast comrades. Nora is Patsy’s foil—impulsive with lust, dressed in extravagant clothes; in other words, a shameless hedonist. Their conversations are immediately overfamiliar, inquisitive, and easy. And yet, there’s something not right.

There’s a moment that reminded me, wonderfully, of a renowned scene in Legally Blonde whereupon Elle Woods, ridiculed for being a law student resembling Barbie, seizes upon a frivolous-seeming detail that proves her client’s innocence: the follicular wrongness of a woman, well-accustomed to perms, who takes a shower the same day. 

In Echo Lane, Patsy’s Elle Woods moment goes like this: “Namely, that Nora Stone, who claims to be seriously allergic to a protein called casein, found in dairy products, a protein that almost killed her, ate, with casual impunity, a generous portion of vanilla ice cream.” In some ways, Echo Lane feels like a psychological thriller disguised as literature, which may have something to do with Sandra Kelly’s former ventures into Harlequin romances.

The syntax can be enjoyably Austenian at times. For instance, in this passage: “Except for purposes of identification, I place no value on looks, but circumstances compel me to mention that in addition to her other natural gifts my sister had her mother’s pale, ephemeral beauty.” 

Less positively, I found that Patsy’s purported genius brother didn’t necessarily have dialogue that matched the exalted descriptions of his cerebral faculties, but to be fair, his character is either portrayed in flashbacks as a child or in a coma in the here and now. Further, subplot involving Amy Zhang, Patsy’s former student with a strict father who disapproves of culinary school, is stereotypical and mostly a MacGuffin for a dénouement to come. The fourth wall is occasionally broken and done so with chummy confidence. Patsy’s long cultivated beliefs are challenged; histories are rewritten. 

Overall, there is much to recommend about this novel, not least of all its considerable entertainment value.

*

Originally from East Vancouver, Jessica Poon is a writer, former line cook, and a pianist of dubious merit who resides in Toronto. She just completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon has recently reviewed books by Robyn Harding, Ian and Will Ferguson, Christine Lai, Logan Macnair, Jen Sookfong Lee, J.M. Miro (Steven Price), Bri Beaudoin, Tetsuro Shigematsu, Katie Welch, Megan Gail Coles, and Ayesha Chaudhry.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-24: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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