Dysfunction, drama, secrets, lies

The Off Season
by Amber Cowie

Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2024
$24.99 / 9781668023518

Reviewed by Jessica Poon

*

The Off Season by BC coastal writer Amber Cowie (Last One Alive) features epic marriage baggage, a classically bratty stepdaughter, and theatrically terrible weather even by Pacific Northwest standards, all taking place in a remote location during, you guessed it, the titular off season.

Jane Duvall is a documentary maker whose career has become mired in an unethical scandal that Cowie leaves intentionally vague for most of the novel. She’s known her new husband, Dom—short for Dominic and bringing to mind BDSM—for like a minute and a half (okay, less than six months—so, a minute and a half). He’s the quintessential embodiment of multiple red flags—his first wife, Melissa, died not so long ago, and his teenage daughter, Siena, is a monstrous brat that makes you wonder whether the evil stepmother myth is a conspiracy machinated by embittered children.

Dom doesn’t exist on social media, which might be laudable, but might also be majorly sus. He enacts a promise from Jane that they will never Google each other. On the one hand, the promise entails that Dom will remain in the dark about Jane’s professional scandal until she decides to tell him of her own accord; on the other hand, Dom’s evasiveness about Melissa’s death might be for less than uxorious reasons.

Dom struggles with Jane’s best friend’s pronouns. He’s kind of a G.I. Joe type. It’s pretty clear that his good looks and sexual prowess played a disproportionate role in Jane’s decision to marry him. Given that Jane met him on vacation after another man tried to steal her bag, Dom is cruising on the halo of manly rescuer who seems infinitely less brutish in comparison. Plus, he speaks Spanish. Honeymoon brain—sexually fulfilled, intellectually bankrupt decisions in romance—is definitely paramount. But, arguably, the most unthinkable thing Jane does is giving up a “ground floor studio apartment in a converted Victorian house at Fraser and Eleventh in the dynamic and diverse East Van neighborhood” for Dom. 

Thankfully, Jane’s best friend and work partner, Mickey, serves as a voice of reason and Googles what Jane herself is too compliant to search herself.

When Dom becomes the caretaker for his friend Peter’s resort in the aforementioned remote area, Jane is eager. She’s cautiously optimistic about becoming Siena’s stepmother, though has never wanted any children of her own. Any optimistic notions, though, about winning over Siena, who just spent time in France, are dispelled upon, well, meeting Siena. Jane can’t help but notice that Dom and Siena have a strained relationship, no doubt in part because of Melissa’s death. Other characters come to light—a cat (Fraser), a helpful neighbour (Murray), and a young man (Ethan), whose posthumous presence inspires still more questions.

Jane thinks investigating the odd circumstances of Melissa’s death could revitalize her career, a bid certainly hinging on characteristic morbidity, but her curiosity only seems to attract trouble. The resort might be haunted, or maybe Jane’s just paranoid. Her questions, if they get answered, only beget more questions.

There are two scenes that continue to live in my head rent-free—the first is when Siena, apparently intending to extend a rare olive branch to a woman she’s determined to hate, walks in on her father going down on Jane, which reminded me of an early episode of Six Feet Under when Ruth Fisher, recent widow and uptight matriarch, runs into her prodigal son pleasuring his new girlfriend, Brenda. Ruth and Brenda’s next scene is strenuously awkward, with Brenda offering bath salts and Ruth commenting that she’s seen quite enough of Brenda. In The Off Season, though, the cunnilingus interruptus is largely played up for laughs. Siena’s olive branch withers and her capacity for revenge on Jane—for existing at all and having the gall to bone Dom—isn’t exactly Bonjour Tristesse. Even so, Siena is still a petty delight of squawking adolescent loathsomeness. 

The other memorable scene is when Siena manipulates Jane and her father—Siena, really, should have an acting agent and her own sequel—all the while making great use of how easily filmable everything, even ostensibly private moments, are.

Rather arrogantly, I thought I had figured out the answers to most of Jane’s curiosities, but Cowie delivers unforeseen plot twists with macabre ease. The Off Season is a thriller suitable for all seasons, but try to read it when there’s bad weather—it’s more atmospheric that way.

*

Originally from East Vancouver, Jessica Poon is a writer, former line cook, and pianist of dubious merit who recently returned to BC after completing a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon has reviewed books by Robyn Harding, Roz Nay, Anne Fleming, Miriam Lacroix, Taslim Burkowicz, Sam Wiebe, Amy Mattes, Louis Druehl, Sheung-King, Loghan Paylor, Lisa Moore (ed.), Sandra Kelly, 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 for BCR]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online 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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