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Art & Books Books

Accusation

ACCUSATION by Catherine Bush (Goose Lane), 356 pages, $32.95 cloth. Rating: NNNN


You can record, videotape, photograph and do a ton of other things to document a situation. But you can never be sure whether you’ve discovered any actual truths.

That’s the theme of Catherine Bush’s deftly rendered tale about a seasoned journalist trying to get to the root of a story about a man accused of child sexual abuse.

Sara is charmed by an African children’s circus while on assignment in Copenhagen, prompting her to suggest to a filmmaker in T.O. that she make a documentary about them. When, on a tour of Australia, members of the circus refuse to return to their home in Ethiopia, accusing circus director Raymond Renaud of physical and sexual abuse, Sara doesn’t know what to think and tries to investigate.

Bush (The Rules Of Engagement) is fascinated by the factors that can mess with Sara’s judgment. Sara can’t really be sure of anything. She herself was falsely accused of a crime – and let down by her friends during the legal proceedings – and may be too influenced by that experience.

After a Toronto performance by the troupe early in the story, she’d driven Renaud from Toronto to Montreal so he could deal with an emergency. Is she now objective enough to handle the story? And her own moral compass is pretty wonky, given that she’s having a long-term affair with a man whose wife is battling cancer.

Later on, the children retract their sexual abuse allegations but stick to their story regarding other kinds of hardship in the circus. But is that because those are the only provable incidents that might expedite their immigration applications?

Hard to tell about any of it, which is why this novel is so successful. Bush not only writes vividly about Toronto and Africa, evoking the kids’ gymnastic talents with great energy, but she gets to the heart of journalism’s essential dilemmas, too.

Bush launches the book alongside Douglas Glover at the Gladstone on Tuesday (September 17). See Readings, page 74. She also appears at the International Festival of Authors October 26 and November 1. IFOA.org.

susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole

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