Overheard conversation between two mothers of teenage girls:

“How’s your daughter?”

“She’s fifteen.”

Rueful smile and wordless look of deep sympathy.

The relationship between adolescent girls and their mothers seems to be a vexed affair and is thus rich fodder for fiction. In Raspberry House Blues, Linda Holeman explores the tensions between teenage Poppy and not one but four mothers. Mother number one is Poppy’s adoptive mother, Denise, who, at the novel’s outset, anounces that she is going to Greece for the summer, leaving Poppy with a family friend. Poppy is furious at these arrangements and shortly after her mother’s departure she runs away to Winnipeg, her birthplace, to visit her father, a neglectful divorced dad. Here she meets mother number two, her father’s wife, Calypso. Poppy goes to Winnipeg because she wants to search for her birth mother. She has no plan, only a naive conviction that she will see a woman on the street and recognize her. Thus the phantom third mother appears, the birth mother who is tall and red-haired like Poppy herself and, of course, perfect.

Poppy’s first few days in Winnipeg are miserable. Her father is vague and unwelcoming. Calypso, a pregnant earth mother, is attempting to toilet-train her toddler son by letting him run around without diapers. The visit improves when Poppy meets a neighbour, Becca Jell, a woman of dramatic pallor with a tendency to quote Tennessee Williams. As Poppy gets to know Becca, she starts accumulating evidence in her quest. Becca was an actress; Poppy has theatrical ambitions. Becca is a redhead. Becca’s hands match Poppy’s. Becca had an unwanted pregnancy and gave up the child for adoption. The birth date of that child is Poppy’s own birthday.

Unfortunately Poppy’s carefully constructed story collapses when she finds out Becca’s real story. Becca is not mother number three but mother number four, the faux mother. At the novel’s denouement Poppy is forced to abandon her fantasy and look with clearer eyes at her real mother and her real family.

This gavotte of the mothers presents two narrative challenges, both admirably handled by Holeman. The first challenge is the detective story problem, planting the clues. What does Poppy know and what does the reader know? Ideally we need to make the connection between Becca and Poppy’s birth mother before Poppy does, but not too much before. Once convinced, we need to stay with Poppy and share her surprise and disappointment when the fantasy collapses. Holeman chooses to give Poppy a growing revelation rather than a single “ah-ha” moment, and this helps to include readers who are working through all the facts at their own pace.

The second challenge is that of voice. Poppy is obnoxious. She is self-centred, obsessed by appearances, narrow-minded, scornful, and under the illusion that she is experiencing the blues when really she is just whining. This portrayal is absolutely recognizable and authentic. Nonetheless, how long do we want to spend listening to this voice? Holeman gets around the problem by giving us glimpses of an inner voice, a pared-down interior monologue revealing someone who is frightened and vulnerable. For example, in one touching scene, Poppy meets a cool boy she is attracted to but because of a domestic mishap she is at that moment wearing an outfit of Calypso’s, is bereft of make-up and is having a hair-disaster day. She madly tries to find a persona: “Quick, who can I be? I can’t think of a character. My mind is a blank.” This reaction is particularly appropriate for Poppy, the drama queen. But it also rings true for many adolescents, whose task is not so much about finding themselves as about constructing themselves from pieces of available models. It is panic-producing when you can’t get the pieces to cohere.

Some of the supporting cast members in Raspberry House Blues are slightly weak. Becca’s brooding housekeeper, Rakel, is a bit Gothic and unnecessary to the story. Mac, the boyfriend interest, struck me as too wise to be true, like the television character who says exactly the right thing just before the commercial break. On the other hand, Becca is an artfully drawn portrait of self-delusion and the tragedy of arrested development. And Calypso’s combination of generic spirituality and domestic squalor is both familiar and original as she moves from caricature to character.

Most importantly, Poppy is convincing. Her story, a tale of being shaken apart so that you can put yourself together again in a stronger, healthier way, is well told and engaging. The obvious audience here is disaffected teenage girls. Tundra might consider a secondary market of mothers of same, who could use some sympathy and optimism.