From the award-winning author of Bang Crunch and Boo, Jones is the harrowing, funny, utterly unforgettable story of a pair of siblings attempting to survive the horror show of their family. Abi and Eli share a special bond. Eli looks up to his sister Abi, two years older, who knows how to inhabit the souls of animals, and sometimes even the soul of her brother. They share jokes, codes, and an obsession with impressive feats of word power—such are the survival tricks for growing up Jones. Pal, their alcoholic father, is haunted by demons from the Korean War, and their less-than-nurturing mother Joy hasn’t got the courage to leave him. Always moving to where Pal gets work, the Joneses go from Montreal to Boston, Salt Lake City, Chicago, and back to Montreal. No matter where they go, though, they can never get away from Jones Town. And then, on Eli’s twelfth birthday, the darkness deepens when he stumbles on something he doesn’t understand—an episode that represents the beginning of Abi’s unraveling, although no one knows it yet. Over the years, Eli and Abi lurch towards and into adulthood on separate paths that sometimes cross, negotiating the world through sexual experimentation, drugs and alcohol, art and language. Searing, affecting and often darkly funny, Jones explores the treacherous intersection between love and violence, and the extreme measures Abi and Eli must take to escape the legacy of a toxic inheritance.
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Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, the two Jones siblings are incredibly close. Abi is vibrant, smart and beautiful; her awkward younger brother adores her. Their father, Pal, is often drunk and full of grandiose plans, uprooting his family on a whim from Montreal to various far-flung US cities. Their mother, Joy, is angry, selfish and rather baffled by her odd but brilliant children. What Abi and Eli want more than anything in life is to escape their toxic parents. But as Abi puts it, no matter where they go, they always end up in their own Jonestown, drinking the same Kool-Aid.
This is a daring, darkly humorous, moving novel, which I had the privilege of working on at Random House Canada. So yes, I'm biased - but I also happen to be pathologically sincere, so you can trust your friendly neighbourhood editor on this one.
