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Natural born chicken >> Cordelia Strube produces more twisted domestic comedy by JULIET WATERS
We should have sympathy for him. Kalbfleisch is a concentration camp survivor whose parents did not survive. But there's nothing noble about this complacent, mean, cheap man. It's not so much that he's tyrannical--deep down he's a pretty apathetic tyrant. In fact, he doesn't seem to really care about anything beyond why Beth, the waitress with the nice breasts, doesn't smile enough. He's proof that surviving tragedy is no guarantee of character. On the other hand, Raymond, who manages Chez Simon, is proof that the human spirit can survive a lot. The chicken restaurant isn't Auschwitz, but it's still a pretty soul-corroding place. There's something strangely archetypal about Dr. Kalbfleisch. I say strangely, because there isn't much room for symbolism in the hyper-realist world that Strube creates. But in the existential microcosm of Chez Simon, Dr. Kalbfleisch could be a stand-in for the Almighty Disinterested Creator, a god who invented free will as a way of ultimately avoiding responsibility. It's been four years since I called Strube's first novel, Alex and Zee, "the feel-bad novel of the year." Every year since then Strube has come out with a feel-even-worse novel. With her brilliantly dark, funny, dysfunctional characters, she is becoming to Canadian literature what Mike Leigh is to British film. Like Leigh's Secrets and Lies, Strube's novel opens with an adopted character searching for a birth mother. Raymond's dream of reuniting with his natural mother is a reparative fantasy he creates in order to deal with several insurmountable conflicts, including the break up of his marriage and his dead-end career. When Raymond does find Gloria, she turns out to be such a white-trash horror show that she makes Secrets and Lies seem like a reunion with Joni Mitchell. Bald, hideous, crass and deceitful though she may be, Gloria is nowhere near as frightening as Raymond's evil twin brother, Dwayne As you read the book, you expect that things must get better for Raymond, because they can't possibly get worse. But Strube proves--chapter after chapter--that they can. Raymond is as pathologically good as his brother is evil, but he can't connect with his repressed anger or hostility, and so he continues to be abused as surely as those around him perpetuate the abuse. In the end, it's almost as hard to respect Raymond's kindness as it is to respect Dr. Kalbfleisch's meanness. But inevitably we do, for no matter how much they both behave like losers, they are still survivors. In this latest novel, Strube has done nothing to beautify her losers. It's as though she's challenging her readers to see how much excruciating reality can be faced before somebody pulls back or goes over the cliff. She's playing a hard game of literary chicken, and so far she's still winning. Dr. Kalbfleisch & The Chicken Restaurant by Cordelia Strube, Harper Collins, pb, 258pp, $20
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After I'd finished reading Dr. Kalbfleisch & the Chicken Restaurant, it took me a while to come up with a theory about the title. Cordelia Strube's latest novel doesn't seem to be about Dr. Kalbfleisch or Chez Simon, the rôtisserie he owns. There's nothing that singles him out from the many minor characters who torture the novel's protagonist, Raymond Gage, except that Dr. Kalbfleisch seems the least sympathetic of all these characters.