Cpt. Sivart’s adventures in wonderland

Life at the Precipice
by R.F. Vincent

Victoria: FriesenPress, 2023
$20.99 / 9781039171497

Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb

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There’s a long tradition of novels masquerading as true stories. Think of Robinson Crusoe. Or Lemuel Gulliver. Readers in 1726 were treated to the appearance of a book of travels by Captain Gulliver, who told of Lilliputians and talking horses, all supposedly true.

Now we have the palindromic Captain Travis Sivart telling us his tale of exploring the wilds of Vancouver Island in search of a mysterious town called The Segway, perched over a lake containing an equally mysterious sea creature named Seggie. Not to mention an even more mysterious Girl of the Mountain.

There are, of course, a few clues that there is a real author behind this novel: you can see his name on the cover and the title page, along with a blurb at the back. But once inside, the fiction is resolutely maintained. It is Captain Sivart who talks to us, who dedicates his book to the drowned crew members of the Northward Bound ship whom he tried to rescue in his role as a navigator on a CP-140 Aurora patrol aircraft, who provides scientific, biographical, and even mathematical background.

Occasionally this drives the reader to think, Is this in fact true? Is there a town called The Segway? Did Demi Moore shoot a film in the neighbourhood?  (Actually, that part is true.) Is it the end of the universe? (That’s not true.) Was there really a ship called the Northward Bound?  But better to put such questions aside and follow Captain Sivart.

After hearing from a gas station attendant that there’s nothing beyond the park where Demi Moore shot her film (it’s the “end of the universe”), Travis of course ignores him and travels into the wilderness, sliding under a fallen tree and coming upon … Seggie? Wild animals? Ghosts?  No (well, maybe ghosts). Anyway, what our scientific captain encounters, amidst a pile of rubble, is a man in a top hat and tuxedo, sitting on a reclining chair and reading a newspaper.

At this point one thinks less Gulliver’s Travels and more the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. And down the rabbit hole we go, meeting a weird collection of townsfolk reminiscent of that old TV series, Northern Exposure. Or perhaps if I knew Canadian television I would say The Beachcombers, a show mentioned in the book: one of the characters even supposedly had a bit part on it (try looking that up).

Travis spends the rest of the book interviewing the townsfolk in order to … well, what? He is here to investigate strange anomalies: reports of the sea creature and of alien fossils or just the history and geography of a town that seems to have risen, fallen, then risen again. Or really that’s more the lake beside it, which may contain some sort of conduit to the Pacific Ocean.

Travis is the scientist looking into things, though it’s not clear who sent him, especially since he’s on sick leave from his job as a navigator, which is somehow connected to the tragedy of the Northward Bound, and what seems to be pressing forward is Travis’s need to heal.  Which means he may have come to the right place, because The Segway seems to be a place that’s attracted people in need of healing.

There’s Dr. Joy—not her real name; everyone seems to have changed their names here; it’s part of a rebirth perhaps; one character even lives in a house called Rebirth. Anyway, Dr. Joy is here in part as a sort of atonement for not saving her husband. Clay Potter, who lives in a tree, is atoning for the death of his wife and daughter. Albet Ironstein the engineer is atoning for making a mistake in the town’s generator. G. Florence G is waiting for her lost son. And so on.

Perhaps we’re in a sanatorium like in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, but Travis doesn’t stay seven years, just seven days, poking around, looking especially for The Girl of the Mountain, who apparently knows the Truth. But the truth about what? The monster? But what is a monster? Two characters want Travis to help with an acoustic device to track Seggie in the lake, but is Seggie a monster? Someone else says Seggie’s not misshapen like a monster. It’s all very symbolic and has you eager to find out and yet reluctant to finish reading: why does Travis have to leave in a week? Can’t we continue with his journey for longer?

But of course it has to come to an end, and then we will find out the explanations about Seggie and The Girl. Or will we? Explanations are always so lame; you get carried along with the mystery, you see signs of a monster, but when the monster finally appears … disappointment.  Maybe it’s better not to find out, maybe mystery is best; that’s what one character says: mystery gives us hope, finding out just ends things.

We are specks in an unfathomable sea, says the town’s Unkempt Poet, yearning to connect. The book is full of aphorisms like this, not to mention the red balloons that deliver its newspaper (called The The Segway News), the spider on Travis’s window, the plaster statue that moves (and that may or may not encase an actual human being), the Group of Seven Minus Four (ecological artists inspired by the actual Group of Seven but who have lost four members), a puzzle over gum balls and probability, a General who’s lost his memory but can fool the innkeeper in a test of probability, and more.

Does it make sense? Does everything have to make sense, asks The Girl? Travis runs up the mountain, gets lost, is found, is celebrated: does he make his connections in the end? Is that the point of it all? Do books have to have points? Did Alice in Wonderland?

I only wish Travis (or the author behind him) had given up science as much as he says he has; some readers may want to skip the technical discussions of rope bridges and acoustics. Art is the way, the book seems to say, but it does have a hard time giving up its science.

But never mind that, this is a gripping tale of a man seeking understanding and finding it in an unlikely place. Next time you’re up near White River Provincial Park, see if you can find The Segway at the end of the universe, but watch out for the chasm.

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Sheldon Goldfarb used to teach composition at UBC and is the author of The Hundred-Year Trek: A History of Student Life at UBC (Heritage House, 2017), reviewed by Herbert Rosengarten. He has been the archivist for the UBC student society (the AMS) for more than twenty years and has also written a murder mystery and two academic books on the Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray. His murder mystery, Remember, Remember (Bristol: UKA Press), was nominated for an Arthur Ellis crime writing award in 2005. His latest book, Sherlockian Musings: Thoughts on the Sherlock Holmes Stories (London: MX Publishing, 2019), was reviewed in the BC Review by Patrick McDonagh. Originally from Montreal, Sheldon has a history degree from McGill University, a master’s degree in English from the University of Manitoba, and two degrees from the University of British Columbia: a PhD in English and a master’s degree in archival studies. [Editor’s note: Sheldon Goldfarb has recently reviewed books by Nick Marino, Joel Heng Hartse, Sebastien de Castell, Esmeralda Cabral, Bruce Whiteman & Mireille Silcoff, Nick Thran, and Susan McIver, and he has contributed a comedic poem, “The Ramen,” based on Poe’s “The Raven.”]

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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.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster