Never have I come across a book that captures the sentiment in Philip Larkin’s infamous poem (“They fuck you up, your mum and dad”) as perfectly as The Gallery of Lost Species. Countless stories have been written about rancid family relationships, of course, but Archibald Lampman Award–winning poet Nina Berkhout’s debut novel dispenses with the usual crutches of parental alcoholism, abandonment, and physical (often sexual) abuse to present a portrait of dysfunction that is all the more unsettling for its ordinariness.

Berhkout’s narrator is Edith Walker, younger daughter of failed artist Henry (who works as a janitor), and French expat Constance, whose raison d’être appears to be living vicariously through her elder daughter, Vivienne. The sisters are a study in contrasts: Edith is pudgy, dark-haired and -eyed, and seemingly talentless, while Vivienne is a lithe, blonde beauty queen with “violet blue eyes” who is good at everything and gets straight A’s without trying. Each girl takes after one parent – Edith, her father; Vivienne, her mother – in both appearance and temperament. While Henry is a warm, easygoing man who spends his spare time painting wintry landscapes, collecting “treasures” from garage sales and the garbage, and taking the family on cross-country road trips, Constance is a cold, distant beauty who holds herself above her family’s lot in life and their shabby home in the downtrodden Mechanicsville area of Ottawa.

The story spans approximately a decade, beginning with Edith at age 13. The lives of the family members revolve around Vivienne’s participation in successive beauty pageants: though only a few scenes depict this involvement directly, it plays a pivotal role in shaping everything from Vivienne’s development to the family’s finances and relationships. Constance makes no apologies for ruthlessly thrusting her eldest daughter into the spotlight when the girl is only three, claiming that she is giving Vivienne the opportunities she herself never had. Largely ignored by her glamorous mother, plain Edith gravitates toward her father instead; he teaches her the value of reading and unwittingly sets her up for a career cataloguing artifacts at the National Gallery.

The early chapters hold promise. Berkhout does a good job introducing the characters and providing enough exposition to lure readers along with the slowly building plot. Edith is an unexciting narrator, largely lacking in personality, but she fulfills the role of observer well. When teenaged Vivienne inevitably rebels against Constance, however, the novel loses momentum.

Berkhout brings us to a point where we are invested in the story, then meanders through the balance of the book; the action becomes predictable and the characters are revealed as a collection of types. Constance is the most obvious: the ice queen whose looks are fading and who bemoans that no one loves her even as she pushes everyone away. Henry is her long-suffering husband, still in love with the memory of her youthful looks and insouciance, who enables her mistreatment of their eldest daughter except in the most extreme cases. Even Vivienne is stereotypical in her rebellion, which is marked by a shaved head, piercings, black eyeliner, and increasing use of drugs and alcohol.

It is in the last few chapters that the book’s early promise is once again revealed. Vivienne moves to B.C., the girls’ father succumbs to lung cancer (he blames the tumours on years of inhaling paint solvents and asbestos in his office building, rather than his chain-smoking wife), and Constance decamps to Florida with her new boyfriend, at which point Berkhout is forced to finally give Edith a purpose beyond that of observer. Stripped of the support provided by the other characters, Edith becomes more complex in her own right, worthy of the reader’s interest and sympathy.
After spending a lifetime in her sister’s shadow (even her first lover is Vivienne’s ex-boyfriend), Edith begins creating a life for herself. While Vivienne still influences her actions and is constantly in her thoughts, Edith no longer lives for or through her. She forms her own relationships, discovers new interests, and gains a greater understanding of who she is and what she wants. Vivienne’s fate is left open, but Berkhout gives Edith a hopeful ending that ultimately satisfies.

The Gallery of Lost Species is a good first novel, but bears the marks of inexperience. Berkhout’s strength as a poet is often her problem here; an abundance of simile, imagery, and florid language bogs down the narrative. The skin of the boy Edith and Vivienne both love (a geologist, no less) smells “like rain on dry earth.” Vivienne skating is “as glamorous as Margaret Trudeau against the snow and ice, spinning around like a music box figurine.” If Berkhout can rein in her tendency to burden her prose with such missteps, her second effort could well fulfill the promise contained in her debut.