It’s the summer of 1945, in Lowertown, Ottawa, and Martin O’Boy’s beloved Granny has just died. It’s the first of a number of hurdles that Martin – who doesn’t like his nickname Boy O’Boy – has to surmount. In Martin’s family, his father yells but doesn’t hit, his mother tries to care but can’t, his damaged twin brother Phil can only communicate by howling, and his closest companion is his one-eared cat Cheap. That summer Martin is sexually abused by the church’s summer organist, who pretends he’s a war veteran but isn’t. Martin longs for the return of Buz Sawyer, the neighbourhood hero, who will hopefully right all wrongs (and does). Not only is Martin’s inner world assaulted; two bombs named Little Boy and Fat Man are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, changing the outer world forever.

Brian Doyle’s Boy O’Boy is a novel of infinite depth, a book that’s riddled with the confusion and emotional pain of a sexually abused child while at the same time being full of the snorts, chortles, and belly laughs that characterize Doyle’s work. An extraordinary writer, he neatly walks the fine line between tragedy and comedy, almost seamlessly melding them. Doyle not only captures the rich nuances of the voice of his young hero but also offers us entry into his wonderfully imaginative world.

Boy O’Boy is full of zaniness, as we’d expect of a Doyle novel. But it also contains moving meditations on class issues, family relationships, and the destructiveness of modern warfare. It’s a sublime achievement.