‘Foursomes too quarrelsome’
Pools
by Martin West
Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2025
$22.00 / 9781772142440
Reviewed by Jessica Poon
*
There’s no beginning like death. Set in Vancouver in the early 1980s, Martin West’s Pools opens with the death of a woman at a pool party. Guests remember her having bright red hair, an indelible body (“You’d remember a woman like that for sure”), and engaging anecdotes; however, no one can remember her name. Her death is treated more like a curious inconvenience and conversational curio. In death, sometimes one becomes fodder for gossip and occasional mortality musings. But mostly gossip. The protagonist, Denis, has a pool business. His marriage to Julie is strained and non-monogamous.
The novel is more a collection of scenes featuring recurring, hedonistic characters who chase sex and drugs, than it is plot-driven. A good passage to convey the novel: “Everybody wanted something. Everyone needed somebody. All things considered, the evening might work out so long as the drinks kept flowing and no one else drowned in the hot tub.”
The characters bleed into a procession reminiscent of reality show fuelled by primitive desires:
Jodi wanted Monty and Monty wanted Julie and Julie wanted Artie. But Artie would only go with Julie if Charlotte came along and Charlotte would only be on board if Arnold played Queen’s Quarter with Monty, and Monty had no clue what a Queen’s Quarter was.
West excels at writing vivid scenes: “A Steller’s jay screamed from a Douglas fir and down the block a bus started up…. Down into the same tropical sea that only a few hours ago people had loved in, cried beside, and died for, and he wondered if there was any bottom to it, any bottom at all.”
A staccato syntax is often used: “Party quibbles. Stapled genitals. Amanda kissed Pamela. Arnold snorted coke. Things worked out. An egret landed on the diving board.”
That staccato syntax has the effect of treating disparate activities and things as equally unremarkable, a comical and deliberate flattening.
Instead of laboriously describing stapled genitals in microscopic detail and resorting to lengthy lascivious winks, West opts for treating ostensibly abnormal, or titillation-adjacent things as utterly mundane. Sex is neither sexy nor difficult, but more like a pastime treated with both ennui and reverence. For the swingers and non-monogamous in Pools, sex is about as special as going to a grocery store with a shopping list. Stapled genitals are on an even footing with the vagueness of “Things worked out.” The lack of specificity of “Things worked out” precedes “An egret landed on the diving board.” There is a deliberate detachment in the writing—you will know what everyone is doing, the fluidity of someone’s sexual orientation, what’s going on in the background. But innermost existential pathos? Harder to detect.
Another example of the staccato syntax: “Times changed. Ideas evolved. Threesomes not workable. Foursomes too quarrelsome. New chrome on the diving board might work. Maybe new deck chairs.” The effect? Falsely equalizing disparate phenomena, starting with broadly vague abstractions, sexual strife, and then wry hopefulness in the form of furniture fixation.
West is often funny without trying: “People who were crazy enough to do so would soon be getting up and commuting to work.” Or, a character bluntly saying, “Sometimes I worry about drowning my children.” Nothing is scandalizing. Bluntness and crudeness are common.
Victoria-born West (The Father of Rain) is skilled at concise, specific descriptions of people: “He was the kind of man who would be good at Russian Christmas parties ripping apart teddy bears, but Denis could not recall him at any of their parties.”
And this passage, which is surely the best use of hydrangeas I’ve ever seen in literature:
Barbara Wilter had always feared her son would become unmanageable in the same way pink hydrangeas returned to their natural blue state if not cultivated. She had been relieved when he chose the military, but disappointed he chose the air force.
On the same page—I did a lot of underlining and internal chuckling—“Julie believed that a loveless marriage could cause ovarian cancer.” West is the kind of funny which comes from truly observing people’s idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies, and then simply stating them. There is no rationing of humour; it’s abundant and generously dispersed.
Pools has no shortage of sex, drugs, and bored rich people. Forget about sentiment or ayahuasca-induced epiphanies. Prepare for a good time, follow up with a shot of Nietzsche.
*
Jessica Poon is a writer in East Vancouver. [Editor’s note: Jessica interviewed Sheung-King, and recently reviewed books by Terry Berryman, Ian and Will Ferguson, Christine Stringer, Faye Arcand, Liann Zhang, Sarah Leavitt, Jeff Dupuis and A.G. Pasquella, Angela Douglas, Zazie Todd, Holly Brickley, Alastair McAlpine, and Jack Wang for BCR.]
*
The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors: 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, 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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