STUNT by Claudia Dey

by Haley Cullingham
IN A NUTSHELL: 9 year old Eugenia and her father, Portraitist Sheb Wooly Ledoux, make Toronto their playground, fishing by the lakeshore, tightroping through abandoned buildings, and infusing the city with magic and mystery, until one day, Sheb disappears. Leaving only a note to her beautiful sister, Immaculata, and mother, Mink, behind, Eugenia is convinced Sheb meant to take her with him. After Sheb disappears, Mink holds a funeral for him, and leaves the girls as well. The novel follows Eugenia and Immaculata, both of whom age nine years after their mother leaves. The girls find love, comfort, darkness, and belonging in their journey away from their parents and their first home, and Eugenia unravels the mystery of her father’s birth in Northern Ontario, seeking out 1.1. Finbar Me The Three, the magician Sheb believed was his father. Eugenia’s journey takes her from a lover named Samuel Station in a houseboat moored at the Toronto Islands, to the Bedou Inn, filled with cats, canaries, velvet and smoke, and as she discovers Sheb’s past, she also discovers who she is.  

THREE WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT: Honest, magical, raw 

INDICATIVE QUOTES:  “Best to go into the woods alone, Eugenius, then you’ll find out for yourself.” 

“To be loved is to be given the space to explode in.” 

“I walk, a strut, a swoop, a death prance. Birds flying against the wind, but not me. My body home to new lusts. The sun seems dim. My stride is pornographic. My balance is impeccable. I should have a halo, a whip, and a tiger. If there were open bottles on the sidewalk I would drink from them. If a man with a cigar walked by me I would finish his cigar in one inhalation and then I would ask him to live with me in a hotel in a language I invented on the spot.” 

“Queen Street. Parkdale’s jugular. Sausage and scaffolding, dog shit and the dust of construction-the city curdles in a messy inverted maniac love with itself.” 

REASON I LIKED IT: I think it’s important to tell our own stories, and I loved the magic Dey finds in the dark corners of the city, and the characters she sculpts that are so multi-dimensional. The prose falls off the page like poetry and the descriptions are vivid. Eugenia and Immaculata embody the idea of growing up, growing out of the things that have happened to you, and growing into the person you will become. The book is full of pain and beauty and I think most women will connect to the journey of discovery.  

BOOK CLUB HOSTING IDEAS: - bring a picnic of wine, fresh fish, and bread from the nearest italian bakery, and picnic on Snake Island. After the wine has been consumed, string a rope between two trees and see who can make it the furthest. Make sure to watch the sun set over the skyline. Finish up with skinnny dipping. 

-walk the streets of Parkdale at sunrise, and explore the city for all the touches Dey illuminates in her book, like the scalloped tops of brick buildings that make the city look like an old-world saloon. Talk to as many people as possible, and really drink the city in. 

- take in a burlesque-style magic show.  

YOU’LL LIKE THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE: Aritha Van Herk's No Fixed Address and Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry