“Norma,” the thorny and rewarding debut novel from Sarah Mintz, begins with a stark declaration: “The older I get, the dirtier I feel.”
Norma goes on to describe herself. “I’m sixty-seven. I have short grey hair. My body is a murky site of mutant growth.” Alone in the wake of the death of Hank, her husband of 47 years — and the slightly earlier death of Hank’s twin sister, Margery, who gave Norma “something beyond work” — Norma spends her days doing transcription work at her kitchen table office, “fifty cents a minute — or it’s fifty cents if you can type fifty cents worth in a minute.”
While she works on everything from court documents to fast food drive-through quality management, her main focus is on a long-cancelled American soap opera favoured by “a gang of Russian soap fans.”
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Things begin to change for Norma when she makes a connection: the subject of a police interrogation concerning child sexual assault that she reads — a teenage girl named Marigold — actually works at the nearby grocery store Norma frequents. “She isn’t a real cashier, I suppose, she just stands by the self-checkout counters in case anyone needs help.” Norma begins to spend more time at the grocery store, sipping coffee and watching Marigold.
Time passes, with Norma continuing her haunting of the grocery store while waiting for updates of the transcription of the investigation until, finally, she decides to reach out.
In different hands, the broad parameters of “Norma” could have resulted in a heartwarming account of cross-generational connection, a story that would “save” both characters and lend new meaning to Norma’s life. This is not that kind of book.
Written in a headlong, almost exuberant style, the novel is rooted in Norma’s internal monologue, broken up by varieties of transcripts and Human Intelligence Tasks (online logic tests that seem intended to train AI, but also serve a more significant narrative purpose). As the narrative careens forward, and Norma breaks free from her solitary, largely homebound existence, cracks within her impressions of reality begin to appear.
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Things the reader may have taken for granted and which have been dismissed by Norma — the mess in her home, “room filled with waxed wrappers and plastic bags with yellow smiling faces,” for example — begin to appear in a new light. Her behaviours, perfectly reasonable in her own mind, are held up to sharp scrutiny when she is faced with the reactions of other characters.
The heartbreak of the novel comes as the reader realizes just what is happening with Norma, while she does not.
Mintz, who recently graduated with a master of arts in English from the University of Regina, is able to balance a clear-eyed, almost ruthless narrative precision with a voluble subtextual empathy. It’s a delicate feat and results in a powerful, destabilizing examination of loss, age and the darkness that — potentially — awaits us all.
Robert J. Wiersema is the author of several books, including “Before I Wake” and “Black Feathers.”
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