Coming Down From Wa

In Coming Down from Wa, winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize Audrey Thomas takes us back to territory familiar from her other novels. Exploration, also the theme of Intertidal Life, is here, as well as the sense of solving a mystery that is also at the heart of Graven Images. And, as is often the case in Thomas's work, the story centres on the search for a lost child. But Coming Down from Wa, unlike her earlier novels, is not set in the Vancouver Islands or the college libraries of Europe and North America. It takes place in West Africa, in the villages of Ghana, and also unlike those novels, its protagonist is a young man. Thomas, often identified as a major exponent of "women's writing," thought of writing from a male perspective as a challenge. The changes of place and gender allow Thomas to explore themes in her work from another angle, as when William, the Canadian protagonist, retreats in confusion when he discovers a large group of women breastfeeding their children: "The women stopped talking when they saw him but the babies sucked on; he could hear their sucking noises, slurp, slurp, slurp, a soft little lapping sound. Little grunts and moans." However, this is the least of William's worries. Visiting West Africa, ostensibly to do research for graduate school, Vancouverite William is really trying to uncover the mystery of his parents' fossilized marriage, apparently connected to an incident that happened not long after his birth when they were aid workers near the Ghanaian city of Wa. As William draws near the source of the mystery, he almost loses himself as well as those close to him. Finally, like other Thomas protagonists, he discovers that his exploration points not to the past but to the future. --Robyn Gillam

Author: Audrey Thomas

Publisher: Viking Canada (AHC)

Year: 1995