Show, don’t tell. It’s a hackneyed but still-relevant adage that’s been bandied about in creative writing classes for years. Unfortunately, this first novel from Saskatchewan author Bernice Friesen fails to heed the lesson.

The Book of Beasts is the coming-of-age story of James Seamus Wharram-Young. Eleven-year-old James lives with his English Protestant father and Irish Catholic mother in Oxford in 1965. Shortly after a tragic car accident shakes the already turbulent family environment, James and his mother, Bernadette, leave abruptly for Ireland and move in with her family. His father quickly becomes a scorned memory, thanks to his mother’s determination to hide all interaction with her ex-husband from her son.

Once in Ireland, James’s previously free-spirited young mother turns with newfound fervour to hard-line Catholicism, ostensibly to work through her grief. The absence of real interiority in the depiction of her character makes Bernadette seem like a mere religious fanatic, whose outlandish behaviour is a caricature. Bernadette is just one of many characters whose lack of depth leaves her looking like a cliché.

As James moves closer to adulthood and begins to develop his own interpretation of the world – one not based on Bernadette’s hysterical ravings – Friesen’s narrative becomes increasingly dependent on vaguely philosophical and rhetorical questions. There is nothing particularly engaging about James’s existential angst. He is like any other twentysomething – self-absorbed, miserable, and trying to make sense of the world.

The novel’s saving grace is the lack of a definitive conclusion. The closing scene, though precisely sketched with no lack of concrete details, is utterly ambiguous. It leaves James happier, albeit with no more of an understanding of the world.

It’s a shame that the bulk of The Book of Beasts consists of windy abstraction. When Friesen shows her readers what’s happening instead of telling them, her writing takes on a power it otherwise lacks.