He cooks for Mave, babysits for the neighbours, and attempts to help out other young alcoholics. He attends an AA meeting in almost every chapter and shows himself to be a fairly decent guy who manages to navigate the many stresses and temptations that dog him. Jared turns out to be an okay student and is able to maintain his sobriety. After bouncing around the city for a while, he ends up with his aunt Mave, a bright and bubbly novelist who is mostly ignorant of the whole trickster thing, despite the fact that her apartment is filled with multiple spirits and ghosts, including one who loves sci-fi and is addicted to Doctor Who. Trickster Drift begins with Jared, sober and committed to avoiding his family’s magical legacy as best he can, on his way to Vancouver to attend university. Both aspects of the novel were engaging, but the pacing was wildly uneven, as was the tone: just as we got used to the horrors and weirdness of, say, a brutal attack by a group of vengeful, man-eating river otters, the story would veer back into something that felt like YA for grown-ups, complete with dialogue that would’ve been at home in a quirky coming-of-age film. That book’s essentially realistic depiction of Jared’s difficult home life and struggles to stay afloat and sane did not always mesh well with the sudden forays into more supernatural territory. His father is Wee’git, a nasty trickster spirit who has reportedly fathered more than 500 kids. with his single mom, who happens to be both a powerful spell-caster and a very angry alcoholic.
It told the story of Jared, a smart but troubled teen living in small-town B.C.
Son of a Trickster was an odd mash-up of YA tropes (i.e., weird kid with a messed-up life finds out he’s got magical powers and that his world is not quite what it seems), Indigenous myths, and vintage Robinsonian skid-lit. author Eden Robinson is the second in a planned trilogy and the follow-up to Son of a Trickster, which landed on last year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist.
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