House of Spells

Canadian author Robert Pepper-Smith’s latest book House of Spells is a simple, emotional, and riveting read. Because of its brevity and style, and appeal make it a novel that you’ll probably read it in one go, but you will want to re-read it time and again in order to relive the engaging drama and revisit the landscapes Pepper-Smith paints with words.
The book makes use of a stylized syntax that is almost confusing at times, and that creates the illusion of narrative simplicity. In spite of its simplicity, the text is rich. A celebration of British Columbia’s winter landscape dominates the prose. The narrative follows the first-person perspective of young Lacey as she observes the emotions stirred by the teenaged-pregnancy of her best friend Rose, and the dubious efforts of the town patriarch Mr. Giacomo to adopt the child. This primary plotline comes across as little more than background in Lacey’s thoughts until the high impact birth of the child - and I mean high impact!
The narrative is framed by the italicized and distanced interjections of the first person narrator from her fire-tower perch high above the landscape of the rest of the story. From this vantage point, Pepper-Smith creates the illusion of a reflective omniscience, overlooking the town from above. The rest of the narrative follows Lacey’s ground-level interactions with her parents, Rose, and other members of her small 1970s B.C. community. Lacey’s introspective and often distracted observations can be disjointed in smaller passages, but become marvelously cohesive in the larger narrative. At the end of the text, Lacey’s voice as the omniscient narrator and the teenage protagonist conflate.
The book deals with such historiographic, social, and personal issues as the Japanese Canadian internment, small-town poverty, community, teen pregnancy, adoption, friendship, malice, loss, guilt, parenthood, and the most beautiful descriptions of infancy. The adoptive fate of the child becomes the central focus of all the book’s prominent characters, and of the reader too. The conclusion feels unresolved but leaves wonderful hope for what might have happened. In its simplicity, Lacey’s voice is entirely convincing, and the overall effect is delightful and invasive. From simultaneously vile and tragic Mr. Giacomo to the barely present infant boy, every one of the characters is entirely human, sympathetic , and full of soul. Pepper-Smith’s powerful and repetitive theme is the need to be gentle, demonstrated in the delicate emotional situations in which the characters find themselves, the metaphoric descriptions of the delicate process of Japanese-styled paper manufacture, and the more overt closing statements.
A refreshing - not brooding - melancholy hangs over every word that Pepper-Smith has written, and the book heaves and sighs within that framework. This is the first book that has made me cry since I was a child myself; it is simple and glorious. From the beautiful sentiments of adoption and loss, to the dilapidated fantasy doll-house abandoned by the Giacomos, this text will cast a spell over your imagination and sympathies. You will be talking about with your dearest friends and family as soon as they have read it, too.