Niskala fails to infuse Saskatchewan with interest
Brenda Niskala’s latest novel For the Love of Strangers is meant to be a chronicle of mainly one woman’s journey through the cycles of life and love. It follows the protagonist Kathy as she experiences her first love single motherhood struggles with her family and work and finally vindication in her fulfilment of “being somebody” in the eyes of society albeit in no particular order.
Niskala jumps back and forth between events and time periods to describe the protagonist’s and related characters’ lives presumably to keep the reader interested since without this device and Niskala’s well-developed writing style the vast majority of the plot is frankly not that interesting.
The origin of the novel has its roots in a series of related short stories that intertwine which explains the seemingly disjointed narrative. Nonetheless this is a quintessentially Canadian — and Canadian Prairie in particular — story of the everyman (or everywoman as the case may be). The only thing is aside from a minor detour in which things get a little more piquant does the story need to be so tedious?
Criticisms notwithstanding Niskala paints a picture of a typical Saskatchewan woman’s life (if there can be such a thing) in the context of coming of age interracial love and her eventual professional and personal establishment in the world.
For the Love of Strangers can be considered a commentary on modern Saskatchewan life a collection of stories where rural roots run deep and locations such as the British Isles or even Alberta are considered exotic. Niskala writes the story from a variety of perspectives including Kathy’s first love Ron with whom she has a daughter Ron’s girlfriend Cherise Kathy’s daughter Joy and of course Kathy.
What starts out as a relatively sleepy Prairie love story between a white girl and a half-Cree boy ends up winding into a slow progression of events in which Cherise starts taking an interest in Joy as a means to understand and experience motherhood vicariously through Kathy. Cherise eventually leaves Ron for her law practice partner Nina. The dejected Ron then tries to seek comfort once again in a closer relationship with Kathy after jilting her in the first place. It all seems a bit like a Prairie Jerry Springer episode and it’s hard to comprehend exactly what kind of impression Niskala wants to leave us with.
Overall the characters often seem self-absorbed slightly vacant or lacking in judgment about important issues (with perhaps the exception of Joy) and it is difficult to empathize with most of them. Fortunately Kathy at least shows a few redeeming moments in her willingness to help both Cherise and Ron despite her initial puzzlement and annoyance with both. These moments however are few and far between. Unlike real human relationships where love or affection is involved it is rare when any of the characters do anything purely free of self-interest or vanity.
Though Niskala creates the underpinnings for a potentially engaging piece of Canadiana she falls short in her treatment of the plot and characters and how they relate to one another. Many of the characters lack a richness of complexity that would normally inspire identification with the reader. In a world where plenty of authors are writing quality stories both locally and internationally this one may be best left on the shelf.
