Bad Ideas
Missy Marston
ECW Press, 2019
Review by Kris Rothstein
Missy Marston’s novel Bad Ideas oozes the atmosphere evocative of life in a small rust belt town in the 1970s. Trudy lives with her mother Claire and four-year-old niece Mercy. They are barely scraping by and dreaming of a better life. The shameful stain of single motherhood on the family is palpable and unforgivable in the eyes of unsupportive neighbours, who dislike anyone who does not conform. The Johnson family, three generations of women, are not cookie cutter replicas of acceptable femininity and they are barely tolerated by the town. While this is dispiriting and exhausting, it doesn’t change the strong sense of self these women possess.
Trudy is only twenty-two but she is already getting world-weary—worn down from living in a tiny house with no privacy, working a factory night shift with abusive co-workers and caring for her sister Tammy’s child. The action begins when Jules Tremblay, a stunt car driver in the vein of Evel Kneivel, rolls into town. Trudy can’t deny her curiosity and attraction and Jules becomes her boyfriend.
Many novels claim to illuminate working class lives but this one feels loving and authentic. The Johnsons have zero money and Trudy’s boyfriend grew up without parents on the streets of Montreal. These are all people who have to work incredibly hard just to survive, but they do not feel sorry for themselves and their plight is not turned into melodrama. The daily grind of survival has made their dreams vitally important to them. Claire remains steadfast in her devotion and loyalty to Darren, her daughters’ father, even though he has been absent for almost two decades. She maintains the daily reality of their romance and it is truly heartwarming to see that her faith was not misplaced. What an advertisement for second chances and the power of waiting! Jules has the largest and most outlandish dream—to achieve the ultimate daredevil stunt and drive a rocket car over the St Lawrence river—and has already shattered his body and his mind trying to make this a reality.
The disappointing nature of men is a theme that runs strongly throughout the novel. Darren does not have the gumption to leave his wife or to parent his children. Trudy has been relentlessly pursued by boys since she was a young teen and the one time she dropped her guard, it ended in an unwanted pregnancy. It is a given for this family that an unmarried woman will have no support from the father of her children. Men are hard to resist but they are also absent and will ruin women’s lives. Despite the fact that the men in the book suck, love is a constant in Bad Ideas (the original bad idea!), and its strangeness and power to shape lives are integral to the story.
Bad Ideas is also a meditation on fate and the idea that we are not truly in control of our lives. Most of the characters know what they want—or think they do—but they also don’t quite know how to make sense of the fact that their lives took so many unexpected turns. The decisions they thought they were making are altered or did not turn out as expected. We all have bad ideas, but the consequences of these decisions are out of the hands of the characters.
Jules is the most extreme example of the quixotic quest, with his rocket car. In fact, Jules and his daredevil stunt are based upon the life of Ken Carter, “The Mad Canadian,” who did build a ramp for a monumental jump to attempt a mile-long jump over the St. Lawrence Seaway in a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental. Carter was also the inspiration for the unusual film Aim for the Roses, which used a combination of documentary, musical theatre, re-creations and personal reflection to delve into crazy schemes and the obsessions that drive them. If one doesn’t know that story the character is almost unbelievable, but if you do then the story seems a little derivative and closely modelled on the real-life character.
The novel has multiple points of view but begins with Trudy. This establishes her as the main protagonist and the character whose story takes centre stage. Some readers might find it difficult to cycle through the perspective of Trudy’s mom, niece, sister, boyfriend, and father. But if you stick with the story long enough, these swirling puzzle pieces coalesce and belong together. The supporting characters are just as compelling and real as Trudy and Jules. Fenton, Tammy’s boyfriend, is an enigma and the way his brain processes information and experiences adds an extra layer of psychological complexity to the story. Since we experience his character from inside his own head, it is difficult to know for certain what is going on, but his peculiar worldview and the descriptions of the sensory thrill he gets from his mental episodes are vividly written. Mercy, Tammy’s daughter, is also an unusual character and Marston offers an ambitious look into the inner life of a child.
Bad Ideas is fun and playful, always wanting to entertain, to make us feel and see through the eyes of these different people. The novel takes chances with form and I applaud those efforts, even if some parts of the experiment work better than others.
Kris Rothstein is a literary agent, editor and cultural critic in Vancouver, BC. She writes regularly for Geist Magazine and can be found blogging about film, comedy and books at geist.com/blogs/kris.