Snap by Susin Neilsen

 

Snap / Susin Nielsen
TO: HarperCollins, c2025.
336 p.

I've been finding it hard to read lately, my concentration is off for many reasons. But I picked up this new book at the library and it "snapped" me out of my reading slump! I've read Susin Nielsen's YA books and enjoyed her style - this is her first adult novel, and it made me laugh and cringe at the same time. Great read, quick moving, engaging, and with some uplift in the end. 

It gives us the stories of three characters who become unlikely friends after meeting in an Anger Management class. The publisher's synopsis introduces them best: 

Frances Partridge, fifty-five, is a beloved children’s author. Geraint Blevins, forty-one, is an auto mechanic and devoted family man. Parker Poplawski, twenty-three, is just starting her career as a wardrobe assistant on a hit TV show. What do these people have in common?

Well, what they have in common is that they each reached a point where they snapped, and did something very unlike their usual selves, enough to put them into a court diversion program, and the Anger Management class previously mentioned. The book explores what led to each of them snapping, and why their lives got so complicated. And it acknowledges that we don't know what is behind a "viral moment" like poor Frances' recorded meltdown at a school visit. 

I thought that Frances' story was the most fleshed out here, though Geraint's is pretty thorough as well. Parker's is a little weaker, but it's hard to have three full storylines going. Still, their unlikely and ultimately charming friendship lifts the book beyond any one person, and I enjoyed it so much. I read it all of one weekend, and found it very funny in parts, while still dealing with serious topics and emotional distress in each of their lives. I loved the side characters, too, and thought they added in many extra touches that grounded the book. While the end might be a touch unrealistic (everyone gets their 'revenge', or at least a sense of justice) it was awfully satisfying. I'd classify this as "Uplit", a book that while delving into unhappiness, turns out right in the end, in a way that leaves the reader feeling positive. I really loved it! 

Taxi!

Taxi! / Helen Potrebenko
Vancouver: New Star Books, 1989, c1975.
162 p.

This is a Canadian novel from the 70s which doesn't examine the theme of Wilderness, or individual crises of identity among women looking at their lives; it looks at the everyday systemic crisis that women faced as urban, working class people in this era. And it is superbly strong and fearless while doing it.

I enjoyed Potrebenko's short story collection, Hey, Waitress!, when I read it some years ago, and have been meaning to get to Taxi! ever since. Thanks to Interlibrary Loan I got my hands on it and read it this week. There are some others who are really keen on getting people to read Taxi again, notably author Anakana Schofield, who loved it so much that she sparked its revival with a piece praising it in the National Post, and then started a blog about it, way back in 2009.

What's it about? Taxi driving, on the surface of it. Shannon is an outspoken taxi driver in Vancouver; she's unusual, as there aren't many women in this soul-sucking job. Through her narration the reader comes to understand the drudgery of this job, and the way in which so many people don't have the option of finding a 'better job' to go to. She talks about the dull passengers who always have the same questions: "Are you married? Are there many women drivers?  Do you like your job?"

Potrebenko openly discusses class, money, feminism, sexism, racism, politics and more -- refreshing, really. She refers to the War Measures Act, to unionizing, to the Vietnam War, to the state that Indians [sic] find themselves in at this time. "It's hard to find work if you're not a white man," one Indigenous passenger tells her; yes, Shannon agrees, yes it is. 

Shannon, alongside her friends and housemates Evelyn & Bradley (and their baby), are placed into a social context. Their friendship goes from strong to fraught and back again depending on the exhaustion of all three, and their employment and economic status. Bradley loses jobs, so has to take on some short-term work he dislikes; Evelyn holds a brief office job but prefers to be home with the baby. Shannon keeps plodding along driving a broken-down taxi, sharing her feminist insights with some of her passengers, and fending off drunks - so many drunks. She has one real friend, Gerald, a middle class young man who has decided being a hippie on the street is more worth his time -- Potrebenko has some strong words for the burgeoning hippie movement, although Shannon does call herself a kind of hippie from time to time. 

"There is no more room in the middle class for the sons of the working class (there never was any room for the daughters). Even the sons and daughters of the middle class are finding there is no further space for them, and so they are cast down into cannabis and hitch-hiking and they pretend for a time that it's groovy...
"
Here's another quote about why she thinks the hippie movement took on steam, too long to type out but a full page and more of socioeconomic philosophy:

This is a novel that still resonates and speaks truth to the reader. It's kind of depressing that this book, first released 42 years ago, is still so timely. But it's energetic, honest, funny in parts, and has a straightforward and unusual perspective that I really appreciated. If you are looking for the fictionally uncommon perspective of a working class woman, this is the one for you.

************************* Helen Potrebenko also writes poetry, and you can find some of it online at her blog Doing My Share of the World's Work - it hasn't been updated lately but still holds a lot of her work.