Closing Down Heaven

by Lesley Choyce

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-543-1

176 pp.

Ages 12-17
November 2016

I don't think I ever really felt fully alive
until that moment
I died.
                                                   (pg. 5)

When he wakes up, sixteen-year-old Hunter Callaghan doesn’t actually remember who he is or how he got there. “There” is a soft lawn amidst sunshine and quiet.  A man who says he can be called Archie helps Hunter remember a cycling accident off the beaten path in the woods where the teen had slammed into a rock face and died. Amidst the confusion of what is real and where he is and what he’s supposed to do now,

           More like a beginning
           because what I thought was the end
           (last breath, last heartbeat, famous last thought)
           was just a phase shift
           with                                 as Archie would say
           plenty of options. 

                                                                        (pg. 28)

Hunter is approached by a confused girl he recognizes as Trinity, a former classmate, who’d had problems at home and at school, with guys and with drugs.   Instructed by Archie to be Trinity’s guide, Hunter takes her for dates: bowling, for coffee, and for lunch at their school cafeteria. Learning of her unintentional suicide, Hunter declares that “Let’s be good to each other.” (pg. 59)  But this relationship is short-lived when Archie declares that, because of overcrowding and changes in people’s beliefs, they’re closing down heaven and sending people back.  As such, Hunter awakens badly injured but alive back at the rock face, and rescued, though

          I felt I was missing something.

         Something was not quite right.

         There was something I should be remembering. 

                                                                        (pg. 76)

A nerdy kid at school, Davis Cooper, approaches Hunter, knowing he’d been on the other side by the coppery aura he gives off. But when Hunter takes Davis to meet Trinity, they see an odd blue aura around her, which Hunter suspects is because she hasn’t died yet, and that it's his job to make sure she doesn’t.

The proverb may be that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but it seems that there’s a bypass to heaven that uses the same paving material.  Hunter knows his actions have consequences and that free will may trump destiny but situations are not always predictable and Closing Down Heaven is proof of that.

The beauty of a novel in verse that is written well is the compendious use of text rolled into a mellifluous form.  It packs a lot into a little.  It’s a trunk full of novel vacuum-packed into a pannier.  Very few people do it really, really well.  Lesley Choyce has demonstrated in Closing Down Heaven, as he did in Jeremy Stone (Red Deer Press, 2013), that he’s one of them.  Closing Down Heaven takes the reader on a graceful journey between heaven and earth, a road fraught with potholes but some lovely scenery.  Though not exactly a road trip story, Closing Down Heaven is still more about the journey than the destination, the life lived than the one extinguished.  Heaven help those who think otherwise.

Scam

by Lesley Choyce

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-1174-4

113 pp.

Ages 12+

RL 3.2

April 2016

At 15 short chapters and a mere 113 pages, and a story plotted by Lesley Choyce (see my reviews of Jeremy Stone and Into the Wasteland from Red Deer Press, 2013 and 2014 respectively), Scam is a valuable addition to Orca Book Publishers' Orca Soundings series of hi-lo books for teens with a story that explores the resiliency of youth.

Scam begins with sixteen-year-old narrator Josh Haslett dealing with the death of his mother.  Josh has always thought of himself as a “good cover-up artist”  (pg. 3) as he had taken care of the household after his dad left and mom had continued to party and do drugs and he had kept social workers oblivious to their situation.  But on the way to his mom’s funeral, as arranged by social work, Josh is scammed of his paltry wallet by a beautiful teen named Lindsey.  Frantic, he chases after her and gets his wallet back but she insists on going to the funeral with him.

As Josh is taken into a group home with other male teens, he continues to meet up with Lindsey who involves Josh in a number of scams, including the theft of wedding gifts, while insisting that she can teach him how to take his own efforts of working the system to the next level.  But Josh knows the difference between survival and cheating others, and he is as uncomfortable with her scamming as much as he is drawn to her.  After helping out at a camp for disadvantaged kids and providing Lindsey with the emotional support she needs after a death in her own family, Josh realizes that somethings that seem very tenous can be very real, even if fleeting.

Lesley Choyce capably gets into the heads of young people, whether they be dealing with dysfunctional families, drugs, mental health or just growing up.  In Scam, Lesley Choyce takes on the issues of grief and trust, and demonstrates that we all need a little help sometimes and that the help can come from the unlikeliest of sources, even those in which we don’t always have confidence.

Into the Wasteland

by Lesley Choyce
Red Deer Press
978-0-88995-522-6
174 pp.
Ages 14-17
October, 2014

I'm done. Through. Finished. I'm on the edge of something and I don't know what it is. I just know that everything and everybody is holding me back. (pg. 7)

Dixon Carter is angry and he’s taking himself off his prescription meds.  And though the name of Dixon’s illness is never identified (I don't like those labels, but once they are sewn into your shirt, it's hard to get rid of them; pg. 48), Dixon is far too complex for a simple mental illness label.  He is insightful, expressive, and appreciative of his parents, his brilliant girlfriend Sylvia, his best friend Zeke and Fairweather Dave, a former surf champion and surfing magnate who gave it all up.  Dixon delves into poetry, including a tome of T.S.Eliot's that includes the poem The Waste Land.  He thinks about illusions, rules, paradoxes and Einstein.  

But, by stopping his meds, Dixon is preparing for a trip down that dark path into the wasteland, and he’s sharing it with readers via his manifesto a.k.a. a journal.  Using his thoughts and his interactions for guidance, Dixon tries to sort out who he is, what he wants and how to go about it.

I'm trying to sort out my ideas, my thoughts, my so-called illness, and my condition.  I am, alas, a product of my culture, of my time, of my ancestry, and I'd prefer to step outside of all that. (pg. 31)

Then the unforeseen happens.  Tragedy.  Everything, everything changes.  (Oh how I wish I could share the details but that would truly be a spoiler.) How Dixon deals is just as unforeseen.

Into the Wasteland is so real.  It’s about being labelled with a mental illness and enduring the multitude of treatments in the hopes of achieving a normal life.  It’s about wanting to be a regular teen, to hang out with friends and your girlfriend, and think about a future that doesn’t include regular transgressions into a dangerous darkness.  And then the impending dark path seems like a walk in the park.  An overlay of grief essentially immobilizes Dixon: no way forward or back.  

I can’t imagine how Lesley Choyce is able to convey the twisted negative thinking of a young person with depression or the glorious euphoria of his manic episodes without an intimate knowledge of the complexities of his thought processes.   Think about this as you read Into the Wasteland and attempt to make your way through Dixon’s tortuous reasonings, which he presents as his philosophy.  He is convinced his thinking is clear but, though it is thoughtful and insightful, it is distorted and confusing, as are his writings in the manifesto.  Lesley Choyce persuasively depicts Dixon Carter as a sympathetic character though his argumentative nature and irritability could have precluded that.  Instead, what Into the Wasteland shares is that a person with a mental illness is never just well or unwell but as complex as any being trying to survive in a less than hospitable environment, whether it be internal or external.  

Jeremy Stone

by Lesley Choyce

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-504-2

184 pp.

Ages 14-18

November 2013

Lesley Choyce has a new voice.  In general terms, it's novel in verse.  Specifically, it's the voice of Jeremy Stone.

Jeremy Stone is a sixteen-year-old whose story begins with his return to school after a three-year silence.  Voice silence, that is.  (He was always being told that he was too loud, too rude, too curious.  So he shut up.)  Though he learned from his grandfather–a survivor of the residential school system–never to live in the past, the baggage that Jeremy carries is critical to his present.  Jeremy had been close to his grandfather, Old Man, when they lived on the reserve.  Old Man has since passed, though his spirit regularly visits Jeremy and advises him on all matters of the heart and mind.  Jeremy's father suffers with the black dogs of depression and is now living Out West, cleaning on oil rigs and making money, though he always seems to be running out of minutes on his cell phone.  Jeremy lives in town with his mother, who has kicked most of her drug addictions except for cigarettes and alcohol, but still has a few demons to wrestle.

Though pegged fairly quickly as a boy of First Nations heritage, Jeremy tries to stay under the radar, often quiet still, rarely engaging with others.  But the flicking of a paper clip at Jeremy's cheek by Thomas Heaney brings Jeremy some attention, especially after he capably wins against Thomas a.k.a. Paper Clip in a phys ed wrestling match.  Caitlan, a girl with "Indian eyes", tells Jeremy about a boy she'd loved, Jenson Hayes, who committed suicide after jerks such as Thomas Heaney broke him down with their emotional assaults. When Jeremy learns Caitlan is cutting herself and thinking of joining Jenson, he realizes that he must make things right, and that does not include revenge.  Through his spiritual interactions with Old Man and others, Jeremy finds a way to help others and ultimately help himself as well.

Lesley Choyce often takes on mature issues, even discomforting ones, in his young adult books, from life on the street in Last Chance (Lorimer, 2009), to grief in Shoulder the Sky (Dundurn, 2002), imprisonment in The Book of Michael (Red Deer Press, 2008) and physical bullying in Gone Bad (Lorimer, 2011).  But in Jeremy Stone, Lesley Choyce has taken on the voice of a First Nations teen and channelled the issues of dysfunctional families, bullying, grief, spirituality and suicide from his perspective.  Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, but Lesley Choyce achieves this with resounding success, never making the reader believe that anyone but Jeremy Stone, with his own strengths and weaknesses, has shared these thoughts and feelings.

Novels in free verse have to say a lot without a lot of words at their disposal.  For that reason, Jeremy Stone is a fast read.  But it is also one that must be contemplated in depth.  In all novels in verse, the reader must read between the spaces and the lines and the letters to see beyond that which the author chooses to share up front.  Jeremy Stone, the book, is very much like Jeremy Stone, the teen: there is so much more than the words.  The richness is realized by those who take the trouble to see beyond the cover and the obvious.