Ottawa writer Charles de Lint frames his modern folk tales in urban settings to reveal the magical and spiritual qualities in average people and places. But Trader is an example of an urban folk tale with too many folks and not enough tale.
The novel’s title character, Max Trader, is a luthier – a maker of fine guitars. He wakes up one morning in another man’s body and – naturally, with a name like Trader – the other man wakes up in his. The switch happens because Max is not attached strongly enough to his routine-filled life and is easily pushed aside by a miserable soul who can enjoy it. Max learns his old life is worth having and wants it back, only to find that his co-trader is perfectly happy to be free of his debt-filled past existence. Trader’s battle to get back his rightful body ends up in a “spiritworld,” where a few friends have been dragged along to help him.
As in much of his past work, de Lint sets the action in fictional Newford, an everycity where magic can be found if you know how to look for it. The author concentrates on how the residents of the city interpret the seemingly impossible events unfolding around them. As one particularly spiritual Newfordite puts it: “When you get to the kind of mojo we’re talking about now, believing in it’s a whole part of what makes it work.”
But Trader, like that sentence, doesn’t work. As a writer, de Lint has three chords in his playbook and soon starts to repeat his tunes, each character blurring into the next. The basic mind-switching plot isn’t new, but it could have been interesting if it wasn’t obscured under layers of extraneous subplots. The dialogue lacks originality and half of the supporting cast could be traded to a different novel and not be missed. Trader feels like a short story expanded, unwillingly, into a rather lengthy novel.