The age-old conflict between art and commerce (otherwise known as “Is it really selling my soul if I get to eat regularly?”) is given a contemporary and Canadian voice in Hoyden, the debut novel from Pamela Westoby. Westoby, a Toronto writer and photographer, tells the story of Abigail Somerhaze’s first year in Toronto. An aspiring photojournalist, Abi reluctantly takes on temping jobs to pay the bills. When she is offered a job as an administrative assistant at Hubris, a start-up software company, she makes the difficult choice of a regular pay-cheque (with benefits and stock options) over her artistic pursuits.

Westoby vividly captures the dot-com boom’s corporate joie de vivre, and its slide into the mainstream and eventual collapse. All of the touchstones are present and accounted for – from espresso machines in corporate kitchens to the tender trap of e-mail – with a definite Toronto-centric spin, such as the subplots involving the gentrification of Abi’s neighbourhood donut shop and the gala reopening of a bankrupt department store.

Ultimately, though, Hoyden (the title is defined as a “high-spirited, boisterous or saucy girl”) does not know what sort of novel it wants to be. It’s too gentle to be an effective satire, and its targets are too broad and clichéd to hold much interest. Nor is it social commentary, although the subplots dealing with Toronto’s homeless population and a social-realist (and surprising) ending indicate leanings in this direction. Nor is it much of a character study: Abi’s views and values change as she sells her soul to the corporate devil, but the transformation is obvious and unconvincing. Despite some occasionally fine writing, and some trenchant social insight, Hoyden fails to linger after the reading is over.