Blood Sports [Hardcover]

Anticipation is a killer. Since the beginning of 2006, it seemed as though the world was conspiring to ensure that everyone-well, at least everyone in Canada-knew about the impending release of Eden Robinson’s new novel, Blood Sports. Early reviews pointed to a huge success; comparisons were drawn to Beautiful Losers and to Edgar Allen Poe; Robinson was dubbed the “bad girl” of Canadian literature. The PR folks at McClelland and Stewart had triumphed. When the book arrived in my postbox, I could almost feel it buzzing.
Unfortunately, anticipation is one of the many things that can come between the text and the reader. I read Blood Sports under the tyranny of its hype, with the story and characters taking on a quality the author probably didn’t intend. Perhaps this is my failure as a reader, or perhaps it is merely the price one pays for being attuned to the literary media. Either way, when I finished the book, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
Hype and anticipation were, however, just two of many filters affecting my reading of this novel. There is also the business of Robinson’s reputation, which, in case you don’t already know, is trumpeted loudly on the book jacket. Her excellent 1998 collection of stories, Traplines, was awarded the Winifred Holtby Prize for the best first work of fiction in the Commonwealth, and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A few years later, she became the first Haisla novelist when Monkey Beach was published. It went on to be nominated for both the Giller and Governor General’s Awards.
Moreover, Blood Sports is linked to Robinson’s previous work because it is a sequel. The novella Contact Sports (from Traplines) features many of the same characters. However, Contact Sports, like the rest of that collection and Monkey Beach, delves into spiritual mysteries and adolescent restlessness in a way that Blood Sports does not. These previous works seem to draw from a well of inspiration that differs from that of the small-town setting of Kitamaat, British Columbia (where Robinson was born and raised), and the more ethereal notions of her Haisla upbringing.
Blood Sports indicates a maturity of style and new ambitions, as well as a change of location. It does not strive for a sense of spirituality, but aims rather to document how the comforts of family and domestic life must co-exist with the sad truths of violence and crime. Essentially, it is the story of store clerk Tom Bauer, of how he survived being raised by a drunken mother to find happiness living on Vancouver’s rough east side with his lover, Paulie, and their child, Mel. His past, however, is tainted by the huge risks he has taken and bad luck; the drugs, crime, and general recklessness that marked his youth resurface and threaten his good intentions for his family. Most disturbing is his intense relationship with his cousin, Jeremy, a sociopath recently released from jail who wants Tom to be punished for something he’d done years ago.
Though the plot itself is not particularly complex, the novel’s convoluted structure rarely serves its strengths. Right from the first page, which consists of a letter from Tom that’s meant to be read by his daughter upon turning eighteen, Robinson puts readers on notice that she is strictly in charge of the story’s details. The prose is so controlled that it feels awkward. “There’s a whole bunch of shit you don’t need to deal with until you’re ready. Your mom . . . and I talked it over. We agreed not to put the heavy on you because we’re trying not to fuck your head up too bad.” The message is clear: there might be something missing in this tale-“a whole bunch of shit,” in fact-and when readers find out what it is, they may just get fucked up.
Blood Sports persists along this frustrating path, continuously changing narrative form but always suggesting that there are undisclosed details. The first section ends with an unexplained attack on Tom; the next section launches into thirty-eight pages of videotape transcripts describing acts involving Tom, Jeremy, Paulie and other characters. The descriptions are flat and the dialogue is not contextualised (such is the nature of transcripts). In other words, these pages can only truly make sense once the book is finished.
In general, there is nothing wrong with non-disclosure in novels; it’s the engine of mysteries and thrillers, and, since Robinson once named Stephen King as a major influence, her technique shouldn’t come as a shock. King, however, gives just enough away to provide traction for the reader to get through his books. In Blood Sports, the withholding strategy becomes the book’s defining feature. Here’s an example:

“Me and Mike were under the radar in high school. I was anyways until . . . well, you know.”
“Yeah,” Paulina said. “I know”

But we don’t know. Whatever is contained in that ellipsis is clearly important, but instead of cranking up the tension, instead of promising that information will indeed be forthcoming, it feels more like a taunt: I know something you don’t know.
This kind of reticence is reinforced through the novel’s structure as well as the voices Robinson projects, which are fractured, and so varied, that they test one’s willingness to suspend disbelief. Many of the epistolary passages read as though they were meant for a third party, while the shifts from second-person narration to transcripts to letters add to the feeling of dislocation-especially when the shifts seem uncalled for.
That said, Robinson is no slouch when it comes to writing a great sentence or distilling an image into a few brief words. The prose is not lyrical, but it’s crisp, crafty and direct-a tone that serves the story well when it comes to scenes of gore, torture and entrapment (and there is no shortage of those). In the space of a few paragraphs, her spare prose and clipped sentences combine to shape crescendoing vignettes, certain to have a visceral effect on the reader.
The really solid writing, however, is devoted to the domestic parts of the novel. Robinson’s take on children, on parenting, on shopping for house paint, even on strolling through the park, are the most believable and engrossing sections of the novel. Unfortunately, such masterful bits underscore the weakness and pretentiousness of other portions. Consider these two section headings that somehow manage to be stylistically anomalous and cryptic: “Do ye indeed speak of righteousness, O, congregation? Do ye judge uprightly, O sons of men?” and “Yea, in heart ye work wickedness’ ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.”
Such pronouncements are odd, but they seem to provide clues in a book whose themes are obscured by schematics. I believe the novel is asking whether or not we can outlive our pasts and whether or not we must take responsibility for our every action. With Robinson holding so many narrative cards to her chest, it is difficult for those questions to come to light. There are other narrative hiccups besides. The product of all of this is a book that did not inspire me to do a second reading, but rather demanded it of me.
Perhaps readerly satisfaction will be attained in Robinson’s next book. As has already been reported, the author is planning a sequel to Blood Sports. Death Sports is to revisit Tom and Paulie, and, I assume, many of the ideas and themes barely developed here.
Robinson is a writer of immense control. I imagine her surrounded by stacks upon stacks of drafts, calibrating and measuring her plots and her characters, knowing that these are things that can unfold endlessly. At thirty-eight-still young for a writer-even with this ultimately unsatisfying outing, I have faith that she will fascinate me with her future work as much as she has with her past. There is always hope, after all, for those willing to take risks-for Tom, for Paulie, and for Eden Robinson.
Matthew Fox (Books in Canada)

"Robinson’s sting worked precisely as the trickster in her intended. . . . Like Leonard Cohen, Robinson combines a variety of narrative forms and conflicting styles with such a high degree of technical virtuosity that the very act of reading a cracked and splintered narrative becomes spellbinding, addictive, unstoppable."
—Globe and Mail

"Eden Robinson writes with the violent beauty of a seasoned knifefighter. . . . In her hands, language is a weapon that can leave you bleeding, unsure of just how you were cut. Reading Eden Robinson feels dangerous."
—National Post

"Blood Sports is a stomach-churning sucker punch of a read for a very talented risk taker."
—NOW magazine

"A gripping page-turner of a tale. . . . Blood Sports is a novel of extreme, even diabolical contrasts that explore by the awful and the beautiful faces of Vancouver. . . . Robinson imbues her novel with continual suspense, carnal voyeurism, and of course, hope."
—Calgary Herald

"Blood Sports is both startlingly original and highly emotionally engaging."
—Winnipeg Free Press

"In print, Robinson is Poe on smack: dark, disturbing and frequently bloody. . . .With spare, taut writing and scenes of torture that would make Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada proud, Robinson has conjured up gripping, page-turning horror in the vein of early Stephen King."
—CBC Arts Online

"Blood Sports is very good: exciting, unexpected and clever."
—Georgia Straight

"Eden Robinson writes some of the most disturbing fiction that Canadian literature has ever seen."
—Quill & Quire