Matthew Fox (Ali Faisal Zaidi)

Sexuality, class, family, death: these grand themes are given a rich and deep exploration in This Is It, a moving and provocative debut novel by Matthew Fox. A Canadian now living in Berlin, Fox (formerly an editor at Maisonneuve and Toronto Life) is the author of the 2005 short-fiction collection, Cities of Weather. His new work balances thematic and formal complexity with bold characterization and vivid descriptions to create a work of significant emotional resonance. If you’re looking for a novel that will make you both think and feel in equal measure, This Is It is it.

Gio Zappacosta-O’Hara’s family is as large, sprawling, and working class as his boyfriend Brian Franklin MacDonald’s is discrete, contained, and economically comfortable. When Brian (whose name Gio abbreviates to BF) develops brain cancer, a frightened Gio temporarily flees their life in Montreal to visit his salty-tongued Great Aunt Maeve in Brooklyn, ostensibly to interview her for a book he’s working on about his relatives’ quirks and foibles.

With the encouragement of BF – whose health recovers and remains stable for several years before dramatically worsening – Gio slowly develops the manuscript. This Is It is billed as “a novel in stories,” and the bulk of its chapters are taken from Gio’s writing about his family, bookended by transcripts of voice recordings where BF provides blunt and often comical feedback, which Gio records on his iPhone until BF is no longer able to comment.

As he illuminates the lives of the various Zappacostas and O’Haras (Catholics, all) at moments of crisis or change – particularly focusing on characters coming of age in different eras – Fox’s language is often ribald and earthy, as when Gio describes his Nonna’s distinctive fart: “her trademark long, weak horn-blow ending in a bubbly sputter.” He has a gift for evocative descriptions of people and their bodies: when Roberto, an Italian uncle whose provenance is the source of great familial shame, struggles to understand his stepsisters, “His single eyebrow was crinkled in the centre, trying to assess the situation. He pulled on his cigarette in short intervals, which made the red-hot tip intensify and dim, like he was sending out Morse code.”

As the narrative moves deftly back and forth through time, Fox anchors each segment with resonant cultural references and demonstrates how characters’ perspectives change and shift as they age. Gio’s grandmother has unexpectedly conflicted thoughts about “the nancies,” despite Gio’s initial assumption that she is dead set against queerness: “a homophobe of the highest order, who categorized homosexuality along with tarragon, Anglicanism, birth control, and aluminum siding – just another disgusting thing that non-Italians did to make themselves important.” Class differences, the immigrant experience, queer relationships, and the role of the Church in people’s lives are all examined in nuanced and thought-provoking ways.

A subplot about the hidden lives of older queer relatives that initially seems like an unnecessary distraction unfolds, in the book’s final pages, into a fascinating and touching glimpse into queer history many decades before Stonewall. And as BF’s health goes into major decline, the writing becomes ever more precise and focused, culminating in a tender scene where Gio paints his ailing boyfriend’s fingernails. Fox’s depictions of major life transitions are sensitive and wise; this is riveting reading.