Review of BAD LAND by Corinna Chong

 4 Stars

This novel appeared on the longlist for the 2024 Giller Prize for Fiction.

The setting is 2016 in Drumheller, Alberta. Thirty-something Regina Bergmann lives a solitary, mundane existence in her run-down childhood home. Her life is upended with the arrival of her brother Ricky with whom she has had no contact for seven years. He is accompanied by his daughter, six-year-old Jez. He is reluctant to reveal why they left Arizona and Jez’s mother Carla. When Regina learns what happened, she decides that her niece needs protection so she takes Jez away on a trip that becomes a journey of discovery.

There are numerous flashbacks. Ricky’s unexpected arrival inspires Regina to think back to their childhood with Mutti, the mother who left them 15 years earlier. It’s obvious that Regina’s relationship with Mutti, a stern and unpredictable woman, was often strained.

What stands out in the novel is the relationship between Regina and Jez. Regina sees herself in her niece, the odd child. Because she is obese, Regina is a misfit shunned by society: “so large and out of place and always on display, a curiosity, even when she just wanted to be . . . herself.” Jez, because her behaviour is often aggressive and manipulative, is also perceived as different. Just as Regina prefers her own company, Jez lives in her own imagined world. Both lash out in anger. Regina has a conversation about Jez, but she’s also talking about herself: “’She feels more deeply than anyone. It’s more than they could ever comprehend, it’s so much it can’t even fit inside her. . . . [They think] she doesn’t have a brain, a heart, like anyone else. . . . She deserves to be loved. Real love.’”

I also enjoyed Regina’s journey of discovery. She learns things about her brother and mother, but she also learns about herself. Most significantly, she realizes how blind she has been, with “’an amazing ability to delude’” herself. Just as Jez lives in her imagination, Regina shapes the past in a way that makes the past tolerable. Throughout the novel, I kept hoping that Regina would have a meaningful conversation with her brother but that happens only towards the end.

The novel touches on some heavy subject matter: parental abandonment, mental illness, social disconnection, and violence. The book also examines generational trauma. Ricky talks about his “messed up” life but Regina has difficulty understanding that her isolation and obesity are probably reactions to trauma. Even her refusal to leave her childhood home is significant. At the end, Regina realizes the past cannot be erased. She also comes to understand the corrosive nature of guilt which is described as an “incurable infection” leaving its victims with “tortured souls.”

A thesis could be written about the symbolism in the novel: the title, the setting with its layers of dinosaur fossils, Wuppertal’s suspension railway, Regina’s job, and Mutti’s jobs in which she is surrounded by the past. And the photograph on the book’s cover is perfect!

I understand why this book was nominated for the Giller Prize. With so many layers to unravel, this is a book worth re-reading.