While is David Huebert’s first novel, he has published two collections of short stories, which won or were listed for various awards. He’s a previous winner of CBC’s short story contest and teaches in the fiction program at the University of King’s College in Halifax. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * While is David Huebert’s first novel, he has published two collections of short stories, which won or were listed for various awards.
He’s a previous winner of CBC’s short story contest and teaches in the fiction program at the University of King’s College in Halifax. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? While is David Huebert’s first novel, he has published two collections of short stories, which won or were listed for various awards. He’s a previous winner of CBC’s short story contest and teaches in the fiction program at the University of King’s College in Halifax.
moves between two stories, both taking place in Lambton County in southern Ontario, a short swim across the river from the United States. One story takes place in spring 1987, told from the perspective of Jade Armbruster, who is 13 years old and living with her family on a former oil drilling site that has become an oil museum. Jade is at war with her childhood best friend, Thea, and experiencing a budding attraction to Marc, the son of a pig farmer.
As if that wasn’t enough, she also has an older sister rebelling against the family legacy and the potential health impacts of living over an abandoned oil field. Nicola Davison photo David Huebert’s writing is dense with imagery, rich with surprising descriptions and, like oil, gushes across the page. The other story is that of Jade’s ancestor, Clyde Armbruster, set over a span of a few years in the 1860s.
Clyde discovers an oil gusher in January 1863, which rescues him from poverty. Meanwhile, his wife, Lise, is desperate but unable to conceive. This story uses an omniscient narrator to show events from the perspective of different characters.
These two storylines gradually weave together to show the consequences in 1987 of decisions made, and secrets kept, in the 1860s. is also the story of oil, which ties the two narratives together. The Armbrusters see themselves as oil people because their fortunes have been directly tied to the discovery of oil for over a century.
But the novel also contains factual information about the history of oil production — between 1862 and 1987, for example, the world consumed about 1.2 trillion barrels of oil. These insertions are somewhat intrusive; they don’t fit the voice of the teenage narrator, nor could they have been known by the 1860s characters.
They seem intended to remind the reader how dependent our society is upon oil, and how it plays a central role in our lives. It’s also possible the non-fiction segments are intended to be experimental, creating a hybrid book of both fiction and non-fiction and raising questions about the nature of truth versus fiction. In light of this background, the choice to set part of the novel in 1987 is interesting; it’s when climate change caused by the use of fossil fuels really began to accelerate and the general public was only beginning to become aware of the problem.
Factual information is also conveyed through a fictitious screenplay and newspaper article. While the writing of the newspaper article is part of the plot, the writing of the screenplay is not, and it feels like another intrusion. The factual information includes mention of the displacement and exploitation of Indigenous people due to drilling for oil, and of race riots targeting Black Canadians.
There are Indigenous characters in the 1987 plot — Jade’s best friend is Indigenous — but they feel largely superfluous, subjected to casual racism but not fully realized. Generally, Huebert writes the teenaged girl characters convincingly, save for the subplot that Jade is a curiosity to be ridiculed by the other girls due to not yet having her period. When her mother sees Jade having an emotional episode, she assumes that she has become a woman and offers her a tampon, in a scene that does not feel realistic.
Oil People Weekly A weekly look at what’s happening in Winnipeg’s arts and entertainment scene. The writing is dense with imagery and rich with surprising descriptions. Like oil, the prose gushes across the page — sometimes ugly, sometimes surprisingly lovely.
The 1860s and 1987 plots have very different voices and feels. One highlight is a description of Jade and Marc’s swim across the river to the United States. The contrast of beautiful images and the stark tension of the danger that arises is breath-stopping.
Huebert refrains from making strong judgments for or against oil. He simply shows how ubiquitous it is in modern life and how dependent upon it we are. In the end, we are all oil people.
Zilla Jones is a Winnipeg-based writer of short and long fiction. By David Huebert McClelland & Stewart, 328 pages, $34 Advertisement Advertisement.
