I’M not quite sure if Love Letters of the Angels of Death by Jennifer Quist is actually quite the literary tour de force and début novel that its publishers would make it out to be, but its opening scene is nothing if not memorable. We meet the first-person narrator, Brigs, along with his wife Caroline, as they discover the remains of Brigs’ mother; remains that are slowly decomposing into the carpet of her mobile camper living-room. There is an irony in this discovery, given that Brigs has come to see his mother — who has been out of touch for a while now — with Caroline, who is newly pregnant with their fourth child.

Bookended by the tail-end of death and the beginnings of a new life, Brig finds himself in the position of having to arrange his mother’s funeral. “Death is,” Brigs tells us, “my province of the family,” and across the course of the novel, both he and Caroline find themselves taking on the responsibility of, as Quist puts it, “stepping over the bloodstains, mouthing the apologies, paying the cheque, giving the body to be buried.” Oddly enough, neither of the pair seems to terribly mind being in this situation. As Caroline puts it, “it’s like death has been specially grooming us for something for years.”

In addition to grappling with the issue(s) of mortality on practically every page, Love Letters also gives us some background on both Brigs and Caroline. We learn about their meeting, about why Caroline can’t stand orchids (they remind her of somewhat traumatic experiences in a biology lab, in case you’re interested); we read about how Brigs’ siblings react to the news of their mother’s death (and how that illuminates Brigs’ own character); we discover the true, unbridled love that this couple have for each other, and how — even in the constant, overwhelming face of finite existence — that affection shines through, giving them the strength to make it past one funeral after another. But sadly, that’s just not enough.

I wish I could say that the one-liners in Love Letters of the Angels of Death make up for the decidedly morbid tone to the novel. I mean, it’s hardly a surprise: the title alone is a clear indicator that this is a book largely concerned with death and dying. Most novels of this ilk tend toward satire or irony, any sort of trope that makes the basic subject matter a little easier to absorb. But between the first-person, direct narrative approach and Quist’s verging-on-the-blunt writing style, Love Letters of the Angels of Death reads as much darker than one would either expect, or hope. Although you could probably argue that the book is equally focused on Brigs’ and Caroline’s relationship, and that it functions as a discovery of their shared experiences, the reality is that Quist seems to have decided to focus on obscure references and borderline-pretentious prose rather than on actually telling a ‘story’.

For example, Brigs ‘speaks’ to us in the first person, but he refers to Caroline in the second person regularly, which only digs a deeper literary hole; there are (many, many) conversations and dialogues that require a fair amount of reading and re-reading to become intelligible. The whole “second person inside the first person” bit is a neat little trick, but it becomes hackneyed through repetition — presumably, given the nature of Quist’s story, this is intended to draw us into the couple’s shared life — and at some point, readers may kind of sit back and think, “Good lord, why am I bothering?”

At the end of it all, Love Letters of the Angels of Death is a set piece. Rather than being powered by a particular narrative or a central conflict, Quist’s work is more a series of linked stories (novellas if you feel particularly generous) than a coherent, cohesive tale. All the literary flamboyance in the world can’t make up for this lack of a central plot, no matter how hard Love Letters tries to bridge the gaps between love and death, between one’s self and the ‘others’. At its best, Quist’s novel is (occasionally) metaphorically intriguing. At its worst, it’s awkward and unwieldy. Most of the time, though, it falls somewhere in the middle, swinging between the two extremes with occasional flashes of illumination.

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Love Letters of the Angels of Death

(NOVEL)

By Jennifer Quist

Linda Leith Publishing, Canada

ISBN 9781927535158

176pp.