‘The Paradise Engine’ by Rebecca Campbell

Reviewed by Kyla Neufeld (from uncorrected galleys, published May 1, 2013)

A missing friend, a mysterious prophet, a haunting: these are the building blocks that create Rebecca Campbell’s debut novel, The Paradise Engine. The London, Ontario writer, who has been previously published in Grain, Geist, and Prairie Fire, flawlessly weaves together multiple narratives in this story on New Age mysticism.

The first narrative follows Anthea Brooke, “a fresh and average history MA,” as she searches for her missing friend Jasmine. At the same time, Anthea works as an archivist at the Kilgour Institute at the unnamed University where she is studying, sorting through the documents of Mrs. Leticia Kilgour, for whom the Institute is named, and assisting with the restoration of the once-popular Temple Theatre.

The second narrative follows Liam Manley, a struggling tenor whose attempts to scratch out a living singing along the vaudeville circuit in 1920s British Columbia lead him into a partnership with Mrs. Kilgour to produce a set of recordings and to put on concerts in the mining villages along the coast where there are, in Mrs. Kilgour’s words, “men and women…with not a note of music in their lives!”

Both Anthea’s and Liam’s lives are touched by New Age mysticism: Anthea’s through her search for Jasmine, and Liam’s via Simon Reid, an enigmatic prophet who is preparing for the end of the world. However, both are sceptical. When Jasmine, who “carried her tarot cards everywhere,” brings Anthea to the Aquarian Centre for a lecture on the Akashic texts, Anthea, instead of listening, preoccupies herself with looking at the books on the shelf, her shoes, the time, while Jasmine nods along with interest. And Liam, during a brief visit to Duncan’s Crossing on his concert tour with Mrs. Kilgour, is approached by Simon Reid, who identifies him as an ancient soul, a “high priest…returned to us.” Reid asks him to join his community of believers who live on Reid’s estate, where they are building an engine to save them from the end of the world. Liam visits the estate but is physically repulsed by his experience there.

This is not a novel driven by plot; The Paradise Engine’s pace inches forward. Campbell never gives us all the clues at once and, instead, has us pick our way through the mystery, which builds suspense and causes us to question the information presented to us. For example, when we are first introduced to Mrs. Kilgour, Liam realizes that “her singing hurt, more than he thought it would.” This, coupled with the reactions of disgust that many audience members display towards her singing, shows us that Mrs. Kilgour cannot sing as well as she believed. But while digging through the boxes of Mrs. Kilgour’s possessions, Anthea finds the recordings she and Liam produced, listens to one, and judges Mrs. Kilgour’s soprano to be quite pretty. Much later we discover that it is not Mrs. Kilgour’s voice on the recordings at all, but the voice of an unnamed singer, passed off as Mrs. Kilgour to keep her from the truth of her amateurish voice.

As is common with non-linear narratives, Campbell tells Anthea and Liam’s stories in bits and pieces. These accounts, however, are bridged by more than just their shared connection to Mrs. Kilgour. Anthea’s grandmother, Hazel Brooke, née Lyon, appears in both narratives and is the only other character to receive her own story outside of Anthea and Liam’s. Hazel first enters Liam’s narrative as a child of five, when her father, Walter Lyon, photographs him in the Temple Theatre at the beginning of his partnership with Mrs. Kilgour. Next, Hazel reappears as an elderly woman, visiting with Anthea and Jasmine. Later, she re-enters Liam’s story as a young woman and becomes his mistress. Finally, we see her married to the man who would become Anthea’s grandfather, toting a toddler and pregnant with Anthea’s father, Colm, as she brushes by Liam, who recognizes her but forgets her name.

Campbell’s novel is supported by its characters, though some hold up more of the weight than others. Liam is, perhaps, the most well-rounded character in the novel and arguably the most interesting. He makes his living by singing popular songs and passing himself off as a professional, though he knows his limitations and often transcribes the music in order to avoid singing the high notes. He is also extremely preoccupied, almost to the point of obsession, with appearing like a gentleman. He times his appointments to the second so as to be fashionably late and spends a great deal of time worrying about his clothes; when he learns of Mrs. Kilgour’s offer, Liam is close to turning it down, until he learns of the payment he will receive, and “then he thought about new handkerchiefs and bespoke shoes.” His narrative also presents his life at different ages, so we also see him as a young man learning under a French master, his term of service in the military during World War I, and his years as an elderly man.

Anthea falls short of Liam’s more developed character. While Campbell dabbles in Anthea’s adolescence, giving us snippets of her life as a child, most of Anthea’s narrative is devoted to her distrust of New Age mysticism and search for Jasmine. We do not see her in the settings that would provide us with the different facets of her character. Also, her choppy and over-punctuated dialogue is jarring and difficult to read, as in this section where she describes a photograph of Liam to her mother: “This guy? Okay. Mrs. Kilgour liked to sing. This guy was like a tenor? You know. Yeah. You know. Vaudeville.”

Hazel is the most fully developed character in the novel besides Liam, as we see her in multiple stages of her life. Jasmine, while important because of the motivation she gives Anthea, falls flat, as we only see her through Anthea’s eyes, and are only given the aspect of her character that is fixated on New Age mysticism. Mrs. Kilgour, while only seen through Liam’s eyes, has a bit more of a back story; the loss of her son Clive in the trenches during World War I provides her motivation for pursuing music, and, while her methods seem dishonest—she often passes herself off as a whole company of singers, such as the Orphic Society, rather than the single singer she is—she genuinely believes that she is bringing music to people to enrich their lives.

The Paradise Engine explores the themes of friendship, music, and New Age spirituality in a rich and compelling way. While the pace might make it difficult for readers to get into at the beginning, the suspense it creates, as well as the mysteries it sets up and the clues it so meticulously lays out, make this novel well worth the read.

NeWest | 315 pages |  $19.95 | paper | ISBN # 978-1927063255