LOVE ENOUGH by Dionne Brand (Knopf), 180 pages, $26.99 cloth. Rating: NNNN
Dionne Brand, Toronto’s former poet laureate, shows a passion for our city’s diversity and landscape in a new novel that touches on the lives of a range of character from committed activists to doomed thugs. The title, Love Enough, refers to the limitations and boundaries human connection both requires and resists.
Social worker June, who’s had a series of relationships with politicos like herself, is having trouble with her lover Sydney, who loves to shop and doesn’t share her activist leanings. Bedri, alongside his pal Ghost, is on a violent downward spiral. Bedri’s father is a way-overqualified cab driver, an economist who speaks five languages. Ghost’s and Lia’s mother is a drug addict with zero parenting skills.
Using potent poetic language, Brand weaves these characters’ stories – they often brush up against each other – into a powerful narrative. All yearn to liberate themselves from problematic relationships. A heartbreaking sequence in which June rejects birthday presents from Sydney in favour of one act of kindness and a hug per day from her lover reveals just how difficult even the simplest of gestures can be.
But what makes any book by Brand special is her portrait of Toronto, which brings moments of pleasure to local readers. Everything feels so familiar: the butt-ugly small-industry buildings on Dupont, the car-rammed Don Valley, the beautiful lake and the messed-up waterfront. And how many of us have sat in a taxi wondering about our Somali driver’s story?
In Love Enough, our city seethes with love, pain, triumph and tragedy. Nobody writes about Toronto like Brand.
Brand reads Saturday (November 1), 3 pm, at Lakeside Terrace and joins the How We Live Now round table Sunday (November 2), 2 pm, at Fleck Dance Theatre.
