Loren Edizel

John Invents Dept: We never do find out his provenance, though as the novel s stories unfold, a series of connections come to light, spanning several years and countries. The most vivid of these are John s fabrications about his patients for instance, a dying man s non-existent wife becomes real after John invents their youthful courtship and the snippets of a long-ago relationship. Between shifts at the hospital, John is adrift, sits in a coffee shop, goes to the laundromat, silently covets his pretty neighbour, according to Globe and Mail. It s a small world, we re meant to gather, and the best we can do is wrangle our coincidences. Yet Edizel s characters are merely two-dimensional illustrations of these splices, and she narrates their lives in expository sound bites. We have the Well-Adapted But Exotically Melancholy Immigrant: I either had to find the new Pablo or perish from the unbearable sadness of exile, he announces, seemingly without irony. When John puts on a CD for his new buddy, Pablo duly becomes a nationalist cliche: Ah, Piazolla sic ! Very thoughtful of you! Selma is the Wistful But Strong Divorcee, having already mourned the marriage s passing for many years. The protagonist of Loren Edizel s novel Adrift resides in this south Plateau neighbourhood, but he lives mostly in his head and in his past. John is a familiar convention of the modern city cogfully employed, with acquaintances but few friends, his inner life commanding far more of his attention than his impersonal, interchangeable days. Even his closest co-worker at the hospital where John works as a night nurse doesn t know much about him: Does he have kids, she prods; where is he from? The stories unfold and interweave: John meets Pablo, an Argentine writer, at the cafe Pablo introduces him to Salvador, who is having a doomed affair with said coveted neighbour, September. September, we learn, is the dental hygienist who tends to one Thomas, who is wait for it the former husband of John s lost love, Selma. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.