This is the story of the relationship between two sisters, Lark (the narrator and elder) and Robin. Their fathers are not in their lives and their mother is very neglectful. The sisters form a strong bond despite very different personalities. They go through life, sometimes close together, sometimes almost estranged, but always able to maintain the tie that binds them.

I liked this exploration of sibling, mother-daughter, mentor-student relationships very much. Well written, with strong characters and voices that rang true. I liked the way it made me think about "editing" our lives...our memories...our realities, consciously or otherwise, by ourselves or those who know us. Very well done. ( )

Dual Citizens follows the anything-but-straightforward life adventures of sisters Lark and Robin Brossard, from childhood to maturity. Older sister Lark narrates. The two are born and raised (after a fashion) in Montreal by their mother, Marianne, a beautiful but moody and perpetually aggrieved young woman whose greatest gift to her daughters seems to be an emotionally withholding, hands-off style of parenting that often veers distressingly close to neglect. With their mother providing room and board but little else (and even these are delivered grudgingly), the girls rely on each other for every other kind of support. Early in the book Lark establishes that she is the practical sister—a lover of order and routine—while Robin possesses an artistic temperament and a soul that is wild, free-spirited and creative but also darkly self-obsessed and impulsive. By a fluke the girls discover Robin’s affinity for the piano, and behind their mother’s back Lark arranges music lessons with a generous neighbour. This is typical of how Robin’s and Lark’s lives move forward: major developments resulting from accidental encounters, spontaneous decisions resulting in sudden and drastic shifts in trajectory. Lark leaves home for a small college in the US, Robin pursues a career on the concert stage. Fascinated by the methodical process of constructing stories out of images, Lark takes up film studies and becomes the protégé of a respected filmmaker named Lawrence Wheelock, later becoming his assistant, and finally his lover. Robin abandons music and falls off the grid, eventually resurfacing in rural Quebec where she’s operating a wolf sanctuary. The story of Lark and Robin covers decades and moves through moments of crisis familiar to all of us: failure, estrangement, illness, death. When the sisters come together again after years apart, both deeply altered by what they’ve witnessed and experienced, they rediscover their love and rekindle the unquestioning trust that from childhood has always bound them together. At its best, Alix Ohlin’s moving and intimate narrative convincingly renders life as we know it: a mostly unplanned construct more deeply influenced by chance than we’d care to admit, and made up of events, conversations, desires and choices that compel us to action and mould us into the person we become. If the book sometimes seems structurally random and even chaotic, that’s probably because it is: because life is chaotic, the world we live in unpredictable. The beauty of Dual Citizens is that it captures life’s chaos without pretense, and without apology. A finalist for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize. ( )

Note: spoilers ahead

Lark and Robin are half-sisters, products of their young, free-spirited mother’s relationships with different American men. The girls essentially raise themselves in Montreal. Their mother provides shelter, food, and clothing, but Marianne is otherwise almost entirely uninterested in them. A high-school dropout, she works at a variety of low-paying jobs and goes through a number of boyfriends during her daughters’ time with her. Eventually, Lark (the narrator, older sister by four years, and an excellent student) gets a full scholarship to a small college in Massachusetts and leaves home. In time, Robin follows her, apparently to escape the attention of one of her mother’s boyfriends, the stylish Herve, who takes an unnatural interest in the girl, lavishly supplying her with designer clothes. Robin is a gifted pianist, and, once in Massachusetts, Lark manages to set up lessons for the younger girl with a Russian émigré music professor. He too develops a proprietary attitude towards Robin. Ultimately, the sisters end up in New York: Lark in film school and Robin at Juilliard. Neither will end up completing their programs. Lark becomes the protégé (and more) of an eccentric but respected experimental film maker; Robin flees a European concert tour, purchases a large parcel of land in rural Quebec (with money she inherits from her paternal grandparents), and creates a nature preserve for wolves—with which, we are to believe, she is mystically connected.

Ohlin’s novel follows the sisters into their mid to late thirties. Although I’ve given a bare-bones run-down of the plot (above), there are one or two key events which happen in the last third of the book that I’ve left out. They don’t make for a particularly satisfying conclusion to what (in the second half of the novel at least) is a pretty listless and lacklustre narrative overall.

In her Acknowledgments, Ohlin thanks one of her friends, Amy Williams, “who saw what I was trying to do from the start.” I wish Ms. Williams had written an afterword to explain what exactly that was. I honestly can’t say I understand what Ohlin’s intentions were. There’s certainly plenty of artsy ruminating about various movies, film theory and editing techniques, and (to a lesser extent) music. Ohlin is also interested in the mentor-protégé relationship (or power dynamic) and relationships between mothers, daughters, and sisters. Lark and Robin, with their American fathers (neither of whom makes an appearance, by the way) are literally dual citizens of the US and Canada, but Ohlin seems to be pointing to their being part of both the human world (of art and creativity) and the natural biological world. Robin identifies with wolves, apparently seeing herself as related to them, and, in her mid-thirties, Lark is struck with the strong biological urge to have a child. Her fertility treatments were about the last thing I felt like reading about.

I did enjoy the first half of the novel, but I sure wasn’t impressed with the second. It felt loose, unfocused, and even pedestrian. How the novel made it onto Canada’s Giller Prize shortlist is beyond me. As my rating shows, I just don’t think it’s very good. ( )

This started out OK, but it turned into a dense story. I read to the end, but there were times when I felt I should abandon the book. ( )