COCKROACH by Rawi Hage (Anansi), 305 pages, $29.95 cloth. Rating: NNNN
When I pick up Rawi Hage’s cockroach, the rebel in me wants to resist the raves raining down upon it – it’s been short-listed for every Canadian prize that matters.
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But it turns out that Hage is definitely the real deal. His hallucinatory tale of immigrant alienation in inner-city Montreal is powerful, poetic and has a solid narrative arc.
The unnamed hero, who’s emigrated from Lebanon, ekes out a life, barely – he’s practically starving as the story opens – by scamming, stealing and ingratiating himself to the right people when he needs to, all the while imagining himself a cockroach.
He’s been sent to see a therapist after a failed suicide attempt, and his story largely emerges through his conversations with her.
When he scores a job as a busboy at a Persian restaurant, it looks like his life might change, and Hage starts filling in the backstory.
That last is a good thing, because this bug is really nasty. It takes a while to grasp what’s behind his mix of whining and rage, and the first third of the book feels like just another story about an angry fucked-up young guy whom we’re supposed to like just because he’s the narrator.
But as his personal history unfolds, the character comes into focus, and when the story takes a twist and becomes a near-thriller, you won’t be able to put it down.
The prose is tight, the haunting imagery beautiful and unsettling and the setting vividly evoked.
Even better, Hage creates fascinating characters: the welfare recipient who pretends he’s a professor Shoreh the torture survivor Reza the musician who’ll play for anyone.
But it’s the cockroach who’ll crawl under your skin.
Hage finds out if he takes the Giller Prize on Tuesday (November 11).
