Reviewed by Dan Twerdochlib
In Workbook, Canadian author and poet Stephen Heighton states that a writer’s deepest preoccupations are the same in every book he or she writes. With The Hidden Keys, André Alexis has revisited his own such writerly preoccupations from yet another unique angle, and his new novel is as fresh and playful as his last two prize-winning releases.
The Hidden Keys is the third instalment of what André Alexis calls his ‘Quincunx’, a sequence of five books that offer different experiences of the same core ideas, beginning with Pastoral in 2014 and continuing with Fifteen Dogs, the 2015 winner of both the Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His Quincunx novels thus far can be enjoyed independently, though the themes they share crystallize as the reader digests additional pieces of the whole. Each novel is a new exploration of genre and language which uses and reuses various themes, including religion, exile, loss, and the mystery of spiritual experience. Though the themes are heavy, Alexis’ touch is light, using the mysterious and the fantastic to raise complex philosophical questions. Pastoral—so titled for its genre, in addition to literally being about a pastor—is about a man who has lost his faith and must confront miracles both explainable and unexplainable. In Fifteen Dogs, Apollo and Hermes grant human consciousness to fifteen unsuspecting canines in order to settle a bet the two gods made in a Toronto pub. His latest novel is no less whimsical and eclectic, billed in the book’s Author’s Note as having been inspired by a reading of Treasure Island, among a number of other texts.
Readers risk disappointment, however, if they expect Alexis’ novel to closely follow Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic. There are a few notable connections between the books: a wealthy addict, for example, initiates the quest of the main character, Tancred, and a veteran with a prosthetic leg is a key (though secondary) character. Beyond a few vague ties to Treasure Island, the echoes of Stevenson’s work are faint at best.
On the other hand, fans of Raymond Chandler will be delighted by the novel’s use of tropes drawn from old school detective noirs. Tancred, a highly skilled professional thief by trade, makes a living stealing from those who have more than they need. He finds himself enlisted to steal four keepsakes bequeathed to the children of a wealthy businessman, employed and funded by their sister, a slumming millionaire heroin addict. The addict, Willow, believes the keepsakes contain clues to the location of a cache of great value: a portion of her father’s estate not yet accounted for. Tancred’s two best friends also quickly become involved. One is a detective assigned to investigate the thefts while the other, a morally ambivalent nihilist (in what is perhaps a nod to the cult classic The Big Lebowski), helps Tancred when need arises for a partner. Also peppered with gangsters, a forger and a private investigator, The Hidden Keys has far more in common with Chandler’s early novels than it does with Stevenson’s late ones. Although you might describe Alexis’ new novel as a quest, for the first half of the novel the detective work overshadows any element of adventure—though the later half is not without its share of excitement and violence.
Late in the novel, Tancred’s infiltration of an upscale apartment building is burdened with some extensive intertextual references. Dubbed “The Castle Rose,” the apartment building bears striking similarity to the tower described in Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower series. King’s Dark Tower, which was also known in his novels as The Castle Rose, drew inspiration from a few of the same sources Alexis cites in his Author’s Note. The complexity of the setting, and the suspension of disbelief required during the Castle Rose chapter demands more of the reader than most of his prose, but is nonetheless skillfully executed.
Unlike King’s series, which is fraught with extensive references to his other works, Alexis permits himself only a brief cameo by three characters from Fifteen Dogs. Though King’s attempts to tie together his various works can, at times, seem rather self-indulgent, Alexis’ cameo serves more as an example of the sense of play that he brings to his craft. In a CBC interview, Alexis suggested that his work is porous, constructed in a manner that allows the reader to enter, inviting the reader to play with meaning and language in a manner meaningful to them. Alexis is the kind of writer who treats language like a toy. Pastoral takes on multiple meanings in his pastoral, and his dog book plays with sound through both poetry and the invention of a canine language. It should come as no surprise that his so-called pirate tale employs intertextuality. Unearthing the linguistic riches in The Hidden Keys (drawn from sources both near—Fifteen Dogs, 2015—and far—La Chanson de Roland, circa 1115) recalls Jim Hawkins sorting his treasure in the Stevenson classic:
“It was a strange collection, like Billy Bones’s hoard for the diversity of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that I think I never had more pleasure than in sorting them.”
The pleasure to be had by sorting out Alexis’ potential sources of inspiration never takes away from the novel’s own innovation, its substance or its ability to stand on its own.
Whether or not you choose to read The Hidden Keys alongside Treasure Island, or how you choose to see the similarities, Alexis continues to deserve comparison to the masters. Like Stevenson, Chandler, or King, his work can be read as pulp fiction or as serious literature with depths to explore.
Coach House | 232 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN# 978-1552453254
‘The Hidden Keys’ by André Alexis
Book Reviews
In Workbook, Canadian author and poet Stephen Heighton states that a writer’s deepest preoccupations are the same in every book he or she writes. With The Hidden Keys, André Alexis has revisited his own such writerly preoccupations from yet another unique angle, and his new novel is as fresh and playful as his last two prize-winning releases.
The Hidden Keys is the third instalment of what André Alexis calls his ‘Quincunx’, a sequence of five books that offer different experiences of the same core ideas, beginning with Pastoral in 2014 and continuing with Fifteen Dogs, the 2015 winner of both the Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His Quincunx novels thus far can be enjoyed independently, though the themes they share crystallize as the reader digests additional pieces of the whole. Each novel is a new exploration of genre and language which uses and reuses various themes, including religion, exile, loss, and the mystery of spiritual experience. Though the themes are heavy, Alexis’ touch is light, using the mysterious and the fantastic to raise complex philosophical questions. Pastoral—so titled for its genre, in addition to literally being about a pastor—is about a man who has lost his faith and must confront miracles both explainable and unexplainable. In Fifteen Dogs, Apollo and Hermes grant human consciousness to fifteen unsuspecting canines in order to settle a bet the two gods made in a Toronto pub. His latest novel is no less whimsical and eclectic, billed in the book’s Author’s Note as having been inspired by a reading of Treasure Island, among a number of other texts.
Readers risk disappointment, however, if they expect Alexis’ novel to closely follow Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic. There are a few notable connections between the books: a wealthy addict, for example, initiates the quest of the main character, Tancred, and a veteran with a prosthetic leg is a key (though secondary) character. Beyond a few vague ties to Treasure Island, the echoes of Stevenson’s work are faint at best.
On the other hand, fans of Raymond Chandler will be delighted by the novel’s use of tropes drawn from old school detective noirs. Tancred, a highly skilled professional thief by trade, makes a living stealing from those who have more than they need. He finds himself enlisted to steal four keepsakes bequeathed to the children of a wealthy businessman, employed and funded by their sister, a slumming millionaire heroin addict. The addict, Willow, believes the keepsakes contain clues to the location of a cache of great value: a portion of her father’s estate not yet accounted for. Tancred’s two best friends also quickly become involved. One is a detective assigned to investigate the thefts while the other, a morally ambivalent nihilist (in what is perhaps a nod to the cult classic The Big Lebowski), helps Tancred when need arises for a partner. Also peppered with gangsters, a forger and a private investigator, The Hidden Keys has far more in common with Chandler’s early novels than it does with Stevenson’s late ones. Although you might describe Alexis’ new novel as a quest, for the first half of the novel the detective work overshadows any element of adventure—though the later half is not without its share of excitement and violence.
Late in the novel, Tancred’s infiltration of an upscale apartment building is burdened with some extensive intertextual references. Dubbed “The Castle Rose,” the apartment building bears striking similarity to the tower described in Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower series. King’s Dark Tower, which was also known in his novels as The Castle Rose, drew inspiration from a few of the same sources Alexis cites in his Author’s Note. The complexity of the setting, and the suspension of disbelief required during the Castle Rose chapter demands more of the reader than most of his prose, but is nonetheless skillfully executed.
Unlike King’s series, which is fraught with extensive references to his other works, Alexis permits himself only a brief cameo by three characters from Fifteen Dogs. Though King’s attempts to tie together his various works can, at times, seem rather self-indulgent, Alexis’ cameo serves more as an example of the sense of play that he brings to his craft. In a CBC interview, Alexis suggested that his work is porous, constructed in a manner that allows the reader to enter, inviting the reader to play with meaning and language in a manner meaningful to them. Alexis is the kind of writer who treats language like a toy. Pastoral takes on multiple meanings in his pastoral, and his dog book plays with sound through both poetry and the invention of a canine language. It should come as no surprise that his so-called pirate tale employs intertextuality. Unearthing the linguistic riches in The Hidden Keys (drawn from sources both near—Fifteen Dogs, 2015—and far—La Chanson de Roland, circa 1115) recalls Jim Hawkins sorting his treasure in the Stevenson classic:
“It was a strange collection, like Billy Bones’s hoard for the diversity of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that I think I never had more pleasure than in sorting them.”
The pleasure to be had by sorting out Alexis’ potential sources of inspiration never takes away from the novel’s own innovation, its substance or its ability to stand on its own.
Whether or not you choose to read The Hidden Keys alongside Treasure Island, or how you choose to see the similarities, Alexis continues to deserve comparison to the masters. Like Stevenson, Chandler, or King, his work can be read as pulp fiction or as serious literature with depths to explore.
Coach House | 232 pages | $19.95 | paper | ISBN# 978-1552453254