Shunpiking Online Vol 2 No 10 Tarcadia - up the tar ponds with a paddle reviewed PAUL MACDOUGALL*

Tarcadia
By Jonathan Campbell
Gaspereau Press 2004
Kentville NS
$27.95 CAN | $22.95 US
ISBN 1894031946

I MOST CONFESS a certain amount of personal jealousy as well as a considerable deal of praise for Jonathan Campbell's first novel Tarcadia. Jealousy because it's the coming of age, growing up in Sydney in the 1970s story, placed within a somewhat unique ecosystem, minus all the present day fear and loathing of the tar ponds, that I would have liked to write. Praise because this is an excellent story of adventure, grit, determination, friendship, family, and above all else true characters living real lives in a real place and making the best of it.

During a typical summer in the early 1970s, teenagers Michael and Sid Chisholm and some friends discover an old raft on the tar ponds. To Michael Chisholm, the story's narrator, the tar ponds raft eventually became a source of refuge, a place he could paddle out to in an old canoe and then read a book on as he drifted aimlessly around breathing in the oily "good, strong smell" of the tar ponds. Somewhat akin to a "pleasant chemical odour like a bathroom spray or scented chlorine."

As the summer progress the brothers spend a considerable amount of time fixing up, painting and outfitting the raft with all the amenities of home, including an old stove, while their union-made father and flaky mother pretend life is still normal even though dad has a more than obvious mistress on the side. How the brothers and their siblings deal with these parental shenanigans eventually leads to a tragic ending on the shores of Sydney harbour, which starts on page one of the book. Campbell doesn't wait to tell us what happens and in this book it works.

Though Campbell begins and ends summer in Sydney's north end with a bizarre nautical accident his novel is actually full of humor, laced with images both authentic and invented that are completely believable and obvious to the reader. This story is much more than a local novel, it a tale of a group of young teens, leading a typical life of adventure and mischief, until the tide turns. The best stories have empathic characters and a strong sense of place, this book has both, and that's why any reader will appreciate it. In addition Campbell has highlighted the ridiculous, present-day, never-ending debate over the tar ponds cleanup by setting his story smack dab in the middle of it and showing us the irony of it all. I commend him for it.

Earlier this spring Campbell won the John and Mary Savage First Book Award as well as the Dartmouth Book Award for Tarcadia.