Property

Cayley’s insightful novel (after the poetry collection Lent) chronicles a fateful day in a Toronto neighborhood riven with class conflict. The reader learns at the beginning that one of the characters will die by the end of the day, and thoughts of death occupy several of the cast members. The novel begins with an unnamed elderly woman who starts her morning by waking up her dog, Ringo, and contemptuously watching her neighbors, including Maddy, the 40-year-old failed actress who lives nearby. Unhappily married, Maddy worries one of her two young children will fall to their death in a gaping hole at the house next door that’s under construction. Maddy’s intrigued yet distrustful of Ilya, a young down-and-out laborer at the site who uneasily accepted the job from an unscrupulous developer, and who regularly finds dead rats floating in the water rising from below the house. Nearby, Maddy’s frenemy Nat worries that her 12-year-old son’s isolation is a bad harbinger for the man he’ll turn out to be, while another elderly woman worries that her grown son, Gabriel, who lives with her, will one day reveal a monstrous side. The tensions come to a head during a dinner party with Maddy’s and Nat’s families after Ringo gets loose. Cayley masterfully renders each character’s inner world, showing how their fears and prejudices are amplified by loneliness. It’s an unflinching tale of a community’s fragile bonds. (Oct.)