‘Whitetail Shooting Gallery’ by Annette Lapointe

Reviewed by Lonnie Smetana

Good fiction can shine a different light on a familiar aspect of life and show the reader something new about a well-explored topic. Annette Lapointe’s fiction explores the topic of sexual identity, which may explain the attention it’s gotten so far, including a Giller long-listed debut among other honours. Lapointe takes adolescent characters that are exploring or discovering their sexual identities and she filters their experience through the lens of a semi-rural small town: homosexuality juxtaposed against the homosocial culture of isolated areas.

Lapointe revealed in an interview with the <Examiner.com> website that “the visible outsider (such as a markedly feminine adolescent boy) is an old trope in writing about rural communities.” She was more interested in creating rough-and tumble characters to see “whether anyone around them would notice.”

Rowan Friesen, the main character of Lapointe’s first novel Stolen, lands in the discovering category. We are able to see the experiences that influence him not just in terms of sexual identity but his general approach to relationships – both romantic and non-romantic. The people around Rowan all suffer from various forms of psychic trauma or mental illness and it’s likely that Rowan does as well. He’s a compulsive thief, retired arsonist and checks many of the boxes on the antisocial personality disorder diagnosis list.

The main characters of Whitetail Shooting Gallery (cousins Jason and Jennifer) explore their sexual identity almost in the same way that adolescents try on personas and attitudes.  There is an incestuous undertone to the cousins’ relationship. With a less skilled writer, the ‘kissing cousins’ could have been trite but the relationship, if you can call it that, is born of confusion rather than cliché. The cousins’ lives continually intersect in the aftermath of violent incidents–almost always with painful, life-altering consequences for one of them. In the end, their tenuous friendship erodes and each is only left with the scars inflicted on them by the other.

It’s hard to like Rowan for a number of reasons, but he appears on the page as a more fully realized character than the cousins of Whitetail Shooting Gallery. He has a strained and awkward relationship with his mother but he still tries in his own way to care for her. The early scenes of Rowan visiting his first love, Macon, in a mental hospital are touching and give some shape to the rage and desperation we see in Rowan and his actions. Lapointe gives more attention to the confusion and frenetic energy of being a teenager in her second novel, sometimes at the expense of achieving wholly credible characters. Jason and other boys his age play some form of hockey inspired by Road Warrior or perhaps Running Man while Jennifer, and her love interest Donna, compete in gymkhana (speed pattern horseback racing). Both cousins have turns roaming the wilds, stalking ‘prey’ of both sexes.

Neither book has traditional, stable parents or role models for the main characters to learn from. This is more evident in Whitetail Shooting Gallery than in Stolen. For both works, one could argue that some or all of the main characters’ behaviours, as well as aspects of their identities (sexual and otherwise), are formed by the void of parental guidance and the circumstances it leads the characters into. A pubescent Rowan even expresses his suspicions “that they might be out to ruin sex for me”.

Several reviewers of Whitetail Shooting Gallery wrote about their confusion over the plot [http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/These-teens-are-hairy-stinky-violent-185745991.html] or their feeling there was no plot at all [http://cupwire.ca/articles/54498] and that the work was merely a character study. I was not convinced that there was no plot at all. I did feel the plot was a little muddled initially before finding its way in the second half of the book. Certainly compared to Stolen, Lapointe’s second novel is perhaps not as cohesive in its overall storytelling.

Writing powerful or memorable openings and endings to literary works is perhaps the most complex piece to get right. The middle of a story, particularly in a novel, can be a space where the reader’s expectations slacken and they become a little more forgiving. Here the novel’s opening paragraphs are powerful and memorable but then the story stumbles for a bit before getting itself back on track. The novel closes with what I call an “and then” ending. We see a very reasonable spot to close off the piece AND THEN some more things happen, things that don’t advance any plot points or show us anything significant about the characters or the place they inhabit.

Over and above any plot, structure or theme strengths and weaknesses, there are some wonderful bits of writing in these two books that made them enjoyable reads. Having grown up in rural Manitoba, there are elements of Lapointe’s novels that I could directly relate to. One passage in particular felt like a moment partially stolen from my own memories: a young boy confined to the house watching re-runs of Prairie Farm Report because there was simply nothing else on the three or four TV channels that could be picked up clearly:

Long stretches of time that he doesn’t remember now at all, but there were moments. Three-minute features about guys who’d invented completely new mechanisms out of pieces they’d found in their yards.

I watched episodes of that show with my father, who would genuinely get excited that he was able to watch. I have fond memories of his expressions and amazement at the machines and tools that would get created from spare parts and a little down home ingenuity.

There are many other elements of Lapointe’s rural world that I either was oblivious to or that simply did not exist where I grew up. This is not the prototypical pastoral setting; there are no sun-splashed harvest days or family picnics. Here the gatherings are either mud-soaked fairs with strange old men more interested in horses than people or barn/bush parties that would give Caligulan orgies a run for their money. However, it was thought provoking for me to compare the world I knew to the world of Lapointe’s novels. This is what successful fiction does–cause you to reconsider your worldview.

Anvil | 256 pages |  $20.00 | paper | ISBN # 978-1897535981