Review in WordWorks, winter 2004

Alphabet is a stunning tour de force. I have rarely encountered a novel so compelling, so disturbing, so ultimately satisfying as this new work by Kathy Page.

Her premise is daunting. What kind of life, especially emotional life, can exist for a person guilty of a horrendous crime, and sentenced to life imprisonment? What kind of relationships are conceivable for such a person, especially one apparently incapable of love? That the resulting novel is not a typical Horrors of Oz “prison” story, although there are horrors enough, not a vehicle for the latest psychological theory, not in any way a manifesto for prison reform and certainly not an indulgent approach to violence or a glamorization of criminals, is a tribute to the clarity of Page’s vision and her skill as a storyteller.

The heart of this skill is her ability to create characters that leap off the page—the result of her eye for telling detail and a pitch-perfect ear for conversation. Her unlikely hero is Simon Austen, a twenty-something illiterate, abandoned early in life by his mother to a childhood of foster homes and truancy, who has murdered his girlfriend for no better reason than her refusal to remove her tinted contact lenses. How can readers like such an unlikeable character? Miraculously, we do, as we begin to sense Simon’s intelligence from his wry observations, his ability to manipulate people and situations, his determination to make use of whatever comes to hand to survive as a lifer.

Page makes us fellow-travellers on Simon’s tortuous journey to self-knowledge. We watch his first attempts at arming himself: learning to read with Ted, to whom “Illiteracy is on a par with being cut off from the electricity”; accumulating crude tattoos to summarize himself—Arrogant, Waste Of Space, Bastard, Shit, Carpet-Fitter, Murderer, A Threat To Women, Brutal, Cold, Bright, and then Courageous, a gift from Bernie, his empathetic probation officer; using his new-found skill with words to write letters for other inmates, then deciding to use the time for study instead, saving his letter-writing skills for penpals he finds by advertizing.

Not that Simon’s journey is trouble-free. Any hero has obstacles to overcome and monsters to fight; what makes Simon believable is that his problems flow so inevitably from his own mistakes and flaws, from the way he evades confrontation with his demons, from the way he tries to manipulate the system and duck the rules. Blind chance plays its part, too, laying traps in the form of a troubled fourteen year-old, the appalling con Teverson, and the unyielding Dr Mackenzie, but also providing a startling and revelatory companion on the hospital ward.

The story is told mainly from Simon’s point of view, through internal comment and external narrative. But Simon, remember, is a self-serving manipulator, and his viewpoint is neatly balanced by those of fellow inmates, prison officials, and medical staff, whose opinions and actions he, and we, can neither ignore nor evade.

The whole is a fascinating insight into a life in transition, into the possibilities that might exist for the seemingly hopeless. Initially we are amused by Simon’s irreverence, his quick one-liners, his bolshie defence of his limited independence; finally, we arrive with him, battered yet exhilerated, by the most extraordinary routes, at a point where Simon has dealt with Before, and can visualize a release from the present into After.

~ Margaret Thompson