Going Home Again

June 10, 2013
Although it opens with a murder, the third novel by the acclaimed author of The Ash Garden is a tale with modest reach about regret, the faded promise of youth, family and marital dynamics, and realizing limitations while moving forward. Narrator Charlie Bellerose recounts “a hell of a year” during which he separated from his wife Isabel, left her and their daughter Ava in Madrid, and returned to Toronto to establish his fifth language school. There, Charlie encounters Nate, his selfish elder brother, who reminds Charlie of his discomforting past. Nate is an affluent lawyer likewise facing “a divorce full to overflowing with discord and grievance,” and the two brothers maintain an uneasy peace. Charlie runs into his first love, Holly Grey, prompting meandering episodes of remembrance: about the death of his parents; his university days in Montreal and close friendship there with both Miles Esler and Miles’s girlfriend, Holly; Miles’s seemingly accidental death; Charlie and Holly’s deepening bond; and his solitary wanders through Europe and eventual arrival in Madrid, where he meets Isabel. Charlie’s middle-aged ethical dilemmas about manhood, marriage, and family provide pleasant contrast to lengthy youthful travelogue that occasionally fails to make a strong impression.

Starred review from July 15, 2013
After two novels (The Communist's Daughter, 2007, etc.) prominently featuring politics and war, Bock offers a deceptively modest domestic drama about a man returning to Toronto from Italy after the breakup of his marriage. After his Italian wife, Isabel, leaves him and takes up with another man, expat Canadian Charlie decides to escape his emotional pain by returning to Toronto to open a new branch of the language school chain he owns. He plans to be gone for one year and to stay in constant touch with his 12-year-old daughter, Ava. In Canada, Charlie reconnects with his older brother, Nate, from whom he's been estranged since chauvinist swine Nate behaved particularly boorishly to Isabel years before. Now going through his own ugly divorce and desperate to maintain his relationship with his two sons, Nate at first seems chastened. But Charlie gradually realizes that Nate has not changed as much as he'd like to pretend and is rabidly bitter that the boys prefer staying with his ex-wife and her easygoing boyfriend. Charlie, who desperately misses Ava and questions why he decided to take himself out of her life, becomes increasingly protective of Nate's boys. He is still pining for Isabel as well as Ava when he runs into his long-lost first love, Holly; he was running away from their troubled relationship when he first met Isabel. Once Charlie corrects his misreading of past events, he begins to take responsibility for his life. And by the time Nate spirals out of control, Charlie understands how fundamentally different a man is from his brother. The elliptical narrative, which sometimes leaves out connecting details, is more intriguing than confusing as Charlie sorts out the truth. On one level, the novel captures the difficulty men have reading women; on a deeper level, Bock plumbs issues of memory, moral responsibility and what constitutes a man's real love for a woman. Finely crafted, disarmingly casual prose that quietly penetrates the reader's mind and heart.

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