Humanity 101

TITLE: Origin of the Species
AUTHOR: Nino Ricci
PUBLISHER: Doubleday Canada

RATING
5/5 "Rain man"; 4/5 "Gingerbread man"; 3/5 "Iron man"; 2/5 "Method man"; 1/5 "Piltdown man"
SCORE: 3/5

I'm not normally partial to romances. I mean, "happily ever after"? Yeah, and then what? This, though, is my kind of love story.

Love, sex: it all boils down to genetics, which when you think about it, boils down to sheer, dumb, blind luck. Primates' nearest cousins died out 50 million years ago. There's maybe one lucky mutation that separates a dead species from one whose descendents will be using opposable thumbs to text each other Tiger Woods gossip.

That's the rather bleak message at the heart of "Origin of the Species" by Canadian author Nino Ricci; life is random chance. Nobody better exemplifies this than Alex Fratarcangeli, an Italian-Canadian graduate student studying at Montreal's Concordia university. Alex drifts along, a passenger in his own life, carried by the currents and eddies of chance as they bring him bumping against fortune's flotsam and jetsam. These include Esther, a bubbly neighbour who sadly suffers from multiple sclerosis, Ingrid, a Swedish divorcee with unfortunate taste in men, Desmond, an unlucky British would-be researcher, Maria, an El Salvadorean refugee, a professor on the skids, a businessman with a disease -- Yes, there's plenty of dumb, stupid luck to go around.

There isn't much plot, but then that was Darwin's point as well; there's no grand plan, no script, no author, no guarantees other than a very final End.

Alex scrapes a living teaching English as a second language while trying to muster enough enthusiasm to finish his thesis on the biological origins of storytelling. Books, in other words, are just another way to propagate your genes -- to get people to have sex with you (fair warning: book reviewing, on the other hand, has no such power). Not that Alex needs any help in this department, despite his rather passive approach to life. The main branches from the main plot follow his disfunctional relationships with a raft of women, including Esther, Ingrid and Maria, as well as with Desmond and the others.

Without plot, you're left to fall back on character and setting, and this is where Mr Ricci's writing comes to life. Alex and his companions are not just believable, they're disturbingly familiar. You want to hate Alex, then catch part of him in your reflection. Ingrid, Esther and the others exist as fully-formed individuals, never mere ciphers or signposts. Each adapts to their environment, showing you different facets of thier personality, now a bullying tyrant, now a cringing supplicant. Only in Desmond, relentlessly awful and irritating, does Mr Ricci get carried into caricature.

"Origin of the Species" isn't a compelling story, but it's filled with compelling people. They pull you along in their wake, unwilling to let go so you can unravel their codes, see what makes them tick.

I said it was a love story, didn't I? And the object of desire is Canada. Canada in the 1980s, in Montreal, to be precise. American readers be warned; Mr Ricci expects you to keep up when he references Steinberg's, Pierre Trudeau and Peter Gzowski. "Origin of the Species" is brashly Canadian in exactly the way that Canadians aren't. It's like the Group of Seven, Canadians are always drawn to the land, even if it's seen from the windows of a coffee shop. The rush of names is overwhelming even for a Canadian, but you'll manage, you'll adapt. It's in your genes.

It's not always a fun read, but the love of place is part of what stops things from being completely gloomy. This may be all we have, but hey, isn't it something? We may be no more than genes, but you know, they're pretty good ones at that. There's the possibilty, not the promise, of happiness for those who fall in love. With the here and now.

And that's the kind of happy ending you can believe in.