Despite their different trajectories, the main characters of Vancouver poet Robert Strandquist’s new novel quickly come to realize a simple truth: there is always further to fall. For Leo, middle-aged, divorced, and shattered by the suicide of his son, the fall is from job loss to vagrancy, from apartment to basement suite to rooming house to living on Vancouver’s streets. Jane, an alcoholic, divorced mother fighting for custody of her son, has a marginally firmer connection to society. She is able to maintain employment, however dubious, and a bare standard of living, but her more internalized compromises and losses are just as acute.

The Dreamlife of Bridges is a hard-edged, impressionistic odyssey through a Vancouver that doesn’t appear on tourist flyers. The novel is suffused with pain and loss, yet offers a fleeting glance at redemption. Strandquist’s characters, though often unlikable, reveal themselves gradually and convincingly. Even the supporting cast – ruthless stock speculators, a dynamite artist and a woman who roams Vancouver accompanied by two geese in leather booties – have their own resonance and depth, rather than merely adding colour.

The narrative careens unsteadily, moving in an occasionally jarring manner between the two storylines without losing momentum. Suspense builds between each character’s scenes, and each narrative strand is equally compelling. What may initially seem like mistakes – a recurring flatness of tone, an
occasional sense of dissociation, a lack of clear resolution, an unclear timeline – ultimately function as key stylistic and narrative elements appropriate to the novel’s themes.

The Dreamlife of Bridges is a disturbing evocation of urban disconnect and despair that gains power from its refusal to look away from suffering or offer platitudes or simplistic solutions.