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Strained relations>>Alice Kuipers’s post-it note novel
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As most single mothers will testify, the refrigerator door is more than just a place for shopping lists. Here, for example, is a current art exhibit from my life, which I will call “Fridge Magnets.” One made out of a school picture of my seven-year-old son. Five from various CBC kids’ shows, which he acquired four years ago for appearing in a Montreal segment. Ten dinosaurs from toddler days, which he won’t let me throw out. Not that I have ever found the time to throw them out, which explains the one from the David Cronenberg film eXistenZ, left by the former tenant of my apartment who sold me her fridge. And finally, this one, given to me by my mother one Christmas, which reads: “SPEAK THE TRUTH, BUT LEAVE IMMEDIATELY AFTER.” Alice Kuipers’s debut novel, Life on the Refrigerator Door, will not be art for Kuipers, who was here last week for Blue Metropolis, has actually set herself a difficult task. A casual but intimate note left by her partner, Yann Martel, who she currently lives with in Saskatoon, inspired the idea for the novel. Of course, great works of art can be done on small notes. The poet/physician William Carlos Williams wrote his poetry on prescription pads, and Kuipers uses one of his best, This Is Just to Say, as an epigram: “I have eaten/the plums/that were in the icebox/ and which/ you were probably/saving/for breakfast/ Forgive me /they were delicious/so sweet/and so cold.” But if each of the post-it notes in Life on the Refrigerator Door were a perfect poem, it would sacrifice an important theme that so much of the essential communication in our lives is crap. From my memory, as the teenage daughter of a busy professional mother, this crap may include: notes with shopping and task lists; notes to explain that shopping and tasks have not been done, and where daughter currently is (at the home of friend with a stay-at-home mom, who lets us play pool in the basement while she cooks dinner); angry notes explaining essential nature of shopping and tasks; crumpled angry notes, ideally left in wastepaper basket, but usually on floor. A crafty teenager can live most of her life in notes, if she plans things—or refuses to plan things—properly. Anyone who offhandedly dismisses Kuipers novel as gimmicky hasn’t lived that reality. And hasn’t lived the consequences of that reality. Kuipers ratchets up these consequences by giving the mother, a busy OB-Gyn, breast cancer. As a plot device, it seems a little heavy handed. But it’s hard to imagine any other device that would squeeze an ounce of empathy or intimacy out of an average teenage girl. Or this contemplative tone from a mother too busy to tell her daughter in person that she’s dying. “I’m glad it’s not so hot, honey. I know you love the summer but it’s nice when the weather starts to turn…Soon the leaves will be in full colour. Your allowance is on the counter.” To Kuipers’s credit this is clearly not a book that argues against working single mothers, or against thoughtless teenage girls. Their relationship is what it is. As a writer, the best she can do is throw essential questions into relief. How do we meet our responsibilities to be there for each other in a world that barely allows us time to talk face to face? And what has to happen to make us conscious of that responsibility? Life on the Refrigerator Door by
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everyone. A novel told in post-it notes, revealing the relationship between a teenage girl and her hardworking single mother, is poetry to some and trite gibberish to others. It resonated with me. It didn’t with the critic at oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com who wrote, “At last, a novel for anybody who thinks that Mitch Albom is too difficult.”