Q Media: An Ode to Ann-Marie

I first encountered Ann-Marie Macdonald in 2003 when I was cast as the cross-dressing, gender-bending Romeo in a university production of the brilliant Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). I fell in love with Macdonald's witty dialogue, her larger-than-life characters, and her very clever reworking of Shakespeare's most well-known texts. Somewhere in-between steamy on-stage kisses with Tybalt, I declared myself a Method actor and had my first real, off-stage gay experience.

When the school year ended I found a copy of Fall On Your Knees, Macdonald's first novel, at a used bookstore, and brought it with me on a 36-day canoe trip through Quetico Provincial Park. Utterly rapt with what my co-counsellor called my "epic chick novel," I devoured Ann-Marie's words nightly in the tent, reading by the weak light of my Petzl and totally unable to interrupt my exploration of the Piper family's skeleton-packed closet. Six years later, the book still haunts me.

A month or so ago, upon the recommendation of a colleague, I hesitantly picked up (rather, hoisted) her second novel, the massive Cold War tome called The Way the Crow Flies. Unsure if I had the time to commit to such a large undertaking, I nonetheless began slowly, tentatively at first, working my way through pages and pages of seemingly endless exposition. Slower to develop than Fall On Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies is nevertheless totally worth the investment. After a few hundred pages, Ann-Marie came through for me once again, and I spent almost an entire weekend in bed reading, unable to stop.

Although it may seem like an exaggerated claim, I find Ann-Marie Macdonald to be a master of suspense. She knows exactly how to lure and tease her reader: dropping a subtle hint here, tossing in an ambiguous passage there, then busting out with a bit of foreshadow so juicy you can't help but turn page after page. Macdonald's plots verge on melodrama -- but masterfully tread the fine line between delirious pleasure and shark-jumping -- and her characters are beautifully, confoundingly complex. Madeleine, the heroine of The Way the Crow Flies, perfectly embodies the spirit and imagination of a feisty preteen and, later, the neuroses and defense mechanisms of a troubled, haunted adult.

Macdonald writes queerness with a rare subtlety; it is neither the focal point of her texts nor an unimaginable. Like in life, her narration of queerness simply is -- it exists not always or simply as a political statement, but rather something that ebbs and flows along with the evolution of her characters, coming in and out of focus with a seemingly natural rhythm.

If you haven't already, any one of Macdonald's texts is a must-read for any CanLit junkie, and anyone and everyone who loves a great read. And, if I must say it to convince you: even Oprah agrees.