Spaz
Bonnie Bowman
Anvil Press
Canadian author Bonnie Bowman’s latest novel, Spaz, continues Bowman’s trend of turning traditional fairy tales on their heads.
This twisted Cinderella story features Walter Finch, a successful shoe salesman who suffers from an almost incapacitating foot fetish. The novel focuses on Walter’s dream of creating the perfect woman’s shoe and how life and love appear despite his distraction.
The novel begins in 1960s suburbia, where Walter grows up amid groomed housewives and cookie-cutter houses. As Bowman describes each character, it becomes obvious that these families, these children, are not destined for greatness. While most will not escape their childhood home, those that do leave remain scarred by their upbringing.
From the beginning, Bowman’s narrative provides a humorous critique of suburbia, catering to stereotypes as often as breaking them. There is the crotchety old grandmother, Clara, whose snap judgements border on racism. There are the nuclear families, never looking past their own neighbourhood.
And yet, as Walter grows, so does the novel. The characters develop and Bowman shows the person behind the stereotype. The reader is endeared towards the mentally handicapped Adelaide, Walter’s unexpected ally. The grandmother becomes caring and, eventually, accepting. The “perfect” twins, whose beauty was expected to take them places, never leave suburbia.
Bowman treads the delicate line between the absolutely absurd and the startlingly honest. She creates a world that is shocking and yet believable.
Despite the ridiculous faults of each character — fetishes, racism and bullying being just a few — it is difficult not to feel a connection towards each person.
Walter Finch, with his ungainly walk and average looks, does not achieve the conventional greatness expected of a protagonist. He simply finds pleasure in his passion, and fulfillment in his final decision.
By creating a leading character that is uniquely human, Bowman shows that being different is not wrong and a fetish is not necessarily a negative.
Spaz is not for everyone. At times it is astonishingly frank. At others, it is almost grotesque.
However, for those not bothered by Bowman’s open style, the novel unravels itself to reveal a unique, well-written story with enough twists and turns to keep the reader interested.
