Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: March 16, 2017 6:22 PM | Last Updated: April 24, 2017
Shani Mootoo
Jonathan Lewis-Adey was nine when his parents, who were raising him in a comfortable house on a tree-lined street in downtown Toronto, separated, and his mother Sid vanished entirely from his life. It is not until he is a grown man — a writer with two books to his name, a supportive girlfriend, and a promising career — that Jonathan finally reconnects with his beloved lost parent, only to find, to his shock and dismay, that the woman he knew as "Sid" has become an elegant man named Sydney living quietly in a well-appointed house in his native Trinidad.
In the nine years since then, Jonathan has travelled from Canada to pay regular visits to Sydney on his island retreat, trying with quiet desperation to rediscover the parent he adored inside this familiar stranger. And for nine years, as his own life and career stall, he struggles to overcome his confusion and repressed anger at the choices Sydney has made. As the novel opens, Jonathan has been summoned urgently to Trinidad where Sydney, now aged and dying, seems at last to offer him the gift he longs for: a winding story that moves forward sideways as it reveals the truths of Sydney's life. But when and where the story will end is up to Jonathan, and it is he who must decide what to do with Sydney's haunting legacy of love, loss and acceptance. (From Anchor Canada)
From the book
Is it already two months since that last flight down? Although I could not have imagined then the full extent of what lay in store for me, I sensed that my life was on the verge of another of its ruptures, and I feared that this was, perhaps, to be my final trip here. And so I did not merely observe the passengers, as had been my habit since my last trip here almost a decade ago (my first trip as an adult, that is; the very first happened some thirty years ago when I was a child), and neither did I merely watch the view from the plane window; this time I tried to ensnare in my mind every detail of all that went on around me and all that passed outside the window. As we headed over the plains to the airport, I savoured the sight of the bamboo-lined, snaking Caroni River and, on either side of it, the farmers' houses sitting amidst remnants of cane fields, and the pigeon pea plots and the black-water rice paddies our reflection sailed across.
From Moving Forwards Sideways Like a Crab by Shani Mootoo ©2015. Published by Anchor Canada.