Looking for Her by Carolyn Marie Souaid
A Fiction Review by James M. Fisher
Carolyn Marie Souaid’s second novel, Looking For Her1 is the story of three distinctly different women whose lives overlap quite by chance. By the novel's end, all three have a different perspective on their individual lives.
The woman we first meet is Cate Morrissey, who is awaiting treatment for a cut in the ER. Cate, 42, is married to Liam Connelly, a high school teacher. Cate herself is a professor at McGill. While waiting in the ER, Cate strikes up a conversation with EMT Isabel Martinez, who has just brought in a young girl by ambulance. In their conversation, Cate discerns that Isabel knows her patient more than she is letting on, and when Isabel discovers that Cate is a professor, she talks Cate into agreeing to help the young girl, Nuna Maqaittik, by tutoring her so that she can eventually go to college.
Soon thereafter, Isabel calls Cate up:
“That girl, you know, that I brought in by ambulance, the Inuit girl, she's damaged goods, I'm afraid to say--you know that expression, right course you do, you're a teacher, you would. Are you still there? Cate?"
Cate sensed a plan hatching. She hesitated. "Yes.”
“I feel like as human beings we can't turn our backs on people in need, people we can help, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, a second-chance thing. This girl should have one, don't you think?"
Cate regretted striking up that conversation in the hospital. She should have smiled once and gone back to her book. She should never have mentioned that she was a teacher. "I told you that tutoring isn't my strong suit.'"
However, Cate agrees to meet Nuna and even welcomes Nuna into her home, to get her away from her boyfriend whom she was living with. Isabel tells Cate that the boyfriend is a bad influence, and once out of that toxic environment, she will flourish. Liam is skeptical and unsure that rooming and boarding her is a good idea.
What ensues is a tightening of the bonds that all three women have with one another, with Cate becoming a mother figure and a tutor. Nuna even calls her “mom”. This is significant for Cate and Liam’s marriage “agreement” was that Cate did not want children. A couple of times Nuna refers to Liam as “Pops” and this strikes a nerve in Liam (“I’m not your pop. I’m nobody’s pop.”), reminding him once again that he is not a father at age forty. Significantly, while he is tolerant of Nuna, he never comes across as a warm, fatherly type. Could there be some underlying prejudice? The reader is left to guess. The marriage itself is on rocky ground that has been slowly crumbling and this storyline underlies the main one of helping Nuna.
However, the tension is turned up a notch when Nuna goes missing, giving the book its title. Questions abound: has Nuna gone back to her worthless boyfriend? Has she run off with another friend? Has she been abducted? Has she gone to Ottawa where she has a relative, or gone back North? Isabel and Cate are launched on a desperate search that takes them all over Montreal and Ottawa. This leads to yet another storyline, that of Isabel’s growing attraction to Cate and Cate’s growth as an individual as she is now out from under Liam’s negative, almost toxic, influence. Will they find Nuna while finding themselves?
I’m not saying anything more about the story at this point to avoid spoilers. Suffice it to say that when Nuna disappears, the book takes off and the page-turning begins in earnest. I enjoyed this book more than I thought I might because it raises some important questions about the White perspective of what our Indigenous people “need”. Is a Western education a solution to their issues? Are they better off economically in the South? What about their spirituality?
Significant is the author’s choice to make all three women of different backgrounds. Isabel comes from an immigrant Latino background, Cate is the quintessential educated White person and Nuna an Inuk trying to adapt to life in the South.
Ms. Souaid’s writing and storytelling are smooth and very realistic, as are the dialogues. Each character is well-developed and likeable in their way. The men in the story are less so, especially Cate’s workmate at the university Waleed, a gay man who is way too close to Cate, texting her at all times with his issues. Even Isabel finds him (and Liam too) annoying. I quite agree with her. He adds nothing to the storyline.
Annoyances with Looking for Her
An author friend recently sent me an email about book reviewing, and I quote her here:
However, I've noticed that there is some missing and needed true criticism out there - most "reviews" these days are long summaries of the work, with very little in the way of context, deeper thought, etc. I always add critical, contextual thought if only through the lens of my own experience.
I quite agree and I had several issues with this book.
Let’s start with the cover. Who is that supposed to be? It’s not a young Inuk girl. It’s too young to be Cate, and while it could be Isabel, why put her on the cover?
Two backstories in Cate’s life2 could have been left out of the story without detracting from the main theme.
Then there is the head-scratching ending that made me wonder: did I miss a significant part of the story? So I backtracked, read and re-read the portion in question, and the significance was still obscure to me.
I would go as far as saying that tighter editing would have resulted in a much better book. Ms. Souaid’s first book suffered terribly from poor editing3 and should not have been published in its present form.
Still, Looking for Her is much better than her debut novel, and as this review was based on an Advance Reading Copy, there is the remote possibility of this book receiving some further editing.
About the Author
Carolyn Marie Souaid is a Montreal-based writer, editor, and mixed media artist who has worked extensively to build bridges between linguistic and cultural communities in Quebec, including a decades-long involvement with the Inuit. Souaid is the author of nine poetry collections and the acclaimed novel Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaittik, set in the aftermath of colonization in Nunavik, where she lived and worked for three years in the 1980s.
About the Reviewer
James M. Fisher is the Editor-in-Chief of The Seaboard Review. He lives in Miramichi New Brunswick with his wife Diane, their Tabby cat Eddie and Buster the Border Collie. James works as an MRI Technologist at the Miramichi Hospital.
Book Details
Publisher : Baraka Books (Oct. 1 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 260 pages
ISBN-10 : 177186348X
ISBN-13 : 978-1771863483
Looking for Her will be released on October 1, 2024. This review was based on an Advance Reading Copy supplied by Baraka Books in exchange for a review.
A disabled sister who took all her mother’s time and her father’s ‘second’ family.
I’m not sure who to lay the blame on for issues like this. The editor’s suggestions were ignored? The author was obstinate? Is the publisher not firm enough?