Jones by Neil Smith
From the award-winning author of Bang Crunch and Boo comes a deeply affecting work of autofiction. Spanning decades, Jones tells the story of a Canadian family struck by trauma, addiction, and abuse.
We meet the youngest, Eli, at age seven when he’s living in a cramped flat above a store with his sister Abi, an aspiring model, and their parents Pal and Joy. Always on the move due to Pal’s job, we follow the family from their hometown of Verdun in Montreal to the landscapes of Salt Lake City, Boston, and Chicago.
No matter where they go, chaos and tragedy follow. Eli recounts drunken fits of rage from their father, a Korean war vet suffering from PTSD, and time spent with their mother, a woman incapable of showing her children affection.
The siblings push forward with a shared dream of ditching their parents and moving to Manhattan in what they call The Great Escape. However, on the day of his twelfth birthday, Eli happens upon a dark secret that Abi has been hiding from him. His discovery changes the course of their lives.
In the aftermath of his sister’s withdrawal and suicide attempt, Eli clings to the hope of a better life once they cut their parents loose. He can't comprehend a world without his sister. When thinking about love and how it might feel, he says, “Maybe it feels like wanting to die if the other person dies. If Abi dies, he’ll probably want to die too.”
I was moved to laughter and tears several times throughout this. Jones is one of those books that leaves a permanent mark, one of the best I’ve read this year and in recent memory. It's a combination of dysfunctional relationships, young innocence, hope, and shattered dreams.
Originally released in hardcover in 2022, the new paperback edition is available now.
★★★★★
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| Neil Smith by Julie Artacho |
Neil Smith is a Canadian writer and translator. His novel Boo won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, and was nominated for a Sunburst Award and the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award, and was longlisted for the Prix des libraires du Québec. Smith published his debut book, the short story collection Bang Crunch, in 2007. It was chosen as a best book of the year by the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail, won the McAuslan First Book Prize rom the Quebec Writers' Federation, and was a finalist for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Three stories in the book were also nominated for the Journey Prize.