The stories of "Last Woman," Vancouver author Carleigh Baker’s sophomore collection (after "Bad Endings"), had me reflecting on anxiety and nostalgia. The two are pervasive — and entwined — in the appealing collection.
In “Outraged on Your Behalf,” an avid social media user prepares for the arrival of her parents, whose visit results from a wildfire evacuation. As Baker’s protagonist savours all the likes for an outraged tweet — “My parents’ house burnt down, f**k the climate crisis” — the story weaves in a tale of a summertime camping trip years before. Though the “spread of Eurasian Water Milfoil” had made swimming less than perfect, the story nevertheless paints the past as relatively idyllic.
A few blocks away and taking place during the Covid-19 lockdown, “Patron Saint of the Hesitant,” traces “an empath, a true knower of the people” whose daily routine includes sending out positive energy, pondering neighbours, and viewing Amanda, a self-help “superstar,” on a laptop. Worried about “the big sad” that’s everywhere, this insular figure has a hopeful encounter in the apartment building’s breaker room.
In “Brightwater,” a married couple returns to their hometown after a flooded river has spread devastation. Surveying his shop’s spoiled equipment and inventory, proprietor Ray takes solace from an eventual return of a new kind of normal.
Throughout "Last Woman," comfort resides in memories or an unknown future. The present day, however, blares like a car alarm.
In satirical and surreal “Burial Ground,” a maintenance foreman at decrepit Rolling Hills Malls is readying for his final job before retirement. The mall is slated to become a combined research lab, liquidation centre and parking lot. Yet, ground tremors, strange sights, and mysterious voices that boom “Welcome, shoppers” have Earl and his child Grizz puzzled. Weighing future obsolescence against current utility, Earl makes a momentous, backward-looking decision — a leap into the literal past.
Elsewhere, Charlotte, the tense young professor of “Catechism,” is assailed by “the flutter of impending doom.” She thinks back fondly to her younger self as she prepares for acceptance by her unnerving colleagues, itself freighted with consequence. Similarly, the fretful woman in “Co-op,” stumbles upon a “Stepford Wives sequel” in Vancouver (where it “is hard to live”). An invitation from one of her co-op’s successful moms — “sparkly for the world and mean on the inside” — spells inclusion, but at a steep cost.
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Baker builds stories whose tensions are visceral. Stasis or steps forward, her characters wonder? Neither’s a sure bet.
Baker has described herself as writing “stories about surviving.” In "Last Woman" survival is rarely synonymous with thriving.
Set in Vancouver’s South Cambie, “a dead neighbourhood slowly being ingested by condos,” “The Midden” depicts a friendly alliance between two abused youths, who intuit that life will get worse not better. A snapshot of the ’80s — “the era of Tough Love” — “Longhand” likewise portrays a friendship between two primary school outsiders, Ebba and Quinn. For Ebba, only “screaming blue murder” offers a way to be heard. As they celebrate friendships, Baker’s stories never forget the unavoidable iniquities of the outside world.
Appearing in three discrete sections at the book’s beginning, middle, and end, “Billionaires” stands out for its purposefully daffy science fiction premise. Zerglon-9, located on Utopis (“everybeing’s favourite planet” and “basically party central”), provides transcripts from “non-meat-based lifeforms” named XX-18, Ffiffy Schmoo Blitz, and Ffarf Blarg Sploot. Their reports explain the fates of Jo Sparks, Eliza Day, and Doreen, entrepreneurs with vested interests in leaving Earth.
Compared to “Midwives,” where Métis friends labour comically over canoe portage in the Yukon while alert for “some kind of blood connection to the land,” and the title story, a snapshot of a self-described “disaster” holed up on a West Coast island as she tends to a broken heart, the schtick of “Billionaires” feels slight, a joke with too much set-up and not enough punchline.
At home in the present day, with its news-conscious stir-craziness, "Last Woman" may provide future generations with a glimpse of Canada in the early 21st century: how it looked, how it felt, how its people managed.
