Humid Vancouver summer nights, and the loneliness of a new city just might be the best inspiration Dr. Gerry Turcotte could have asked for when he started writing his latest novel, The Space Between.
“When I moved here [four years ago], I was living in a dingy apartment with no ventilation, no cooling, and every night of that first summer it was 20 degrees and above,” the President and Principal of St Mark’s College told friends and fans gathered for the book’s launch at UBC’s St. Andrew’s Hall. “Not surprisingly, sleep, which is not my friend anyway, didn’t come—I had nothing else to do but to spend the night writing.”
The book was finished in just under five weeks.
The book was launched at an event hosted by Dr. Ross Lockhart, Professor of Mission Studies at Vancouver School of Theology and Dean of non-Catholic St. Andrew’s Hall.
Dr. Turcotte said that, given the novel’s religious themes, he was gratified by Dr. Lockhart’s offer to launch the book, remarking the release was an “ecumenical event.”
“I really thought it needed to be part of the theological neighborhood,” he said.
Before reading from sections of the novel, Dr. Turcotte explained the book’s origins. “This book really emerged out of nowhere,” he said. “Sometimes books are like that. I did a book for Oxford University Press, and it took seven years and it was a misery—almost every line. And then some books just come out of nowhere. This was kind of joyful.”
The Space Between is the spiritual successor to his first novel, Flying in Silence, which was published twenty-five years ago. It follows the life of a young boy (who bears not a small resemblance to his creator) “from boyhood to adult reckoning.”
“I want to emphasize that it is a fictional novel,” Dr. Turcotte told the gathering, “even though it walks a very fine line between episodes of my own life—I’ve used things that are true.”
“It’s a small, playful novel,” Turcotte said. “It’s not Tolstoy… It’s not Toy Story either, but hopefully, it’s got a bit of pathos.”
Like Dr. Turcotte, his protagonist grows up straddling two linguistic worlds—his father couldn’t speak English, and his mother couldn’t speak French. Additionally, “[the story is] largely set in a hardware store,” he said, “a dilapidated, all-consuming business on the brink of bankruptcy, which was indeed my home and my childhood.”
The boy is steeped in religious life and culture, but unlike Dr. Turcotte, he often fails to understand what he experiences, leading to some funny moments.
All the sudo-biography serves the literary project. “A novelist’s job isn’t to tell the literal truth about something, as much as find a way to talk about what we know in a manner that’s truthful to the human experience,” said Dr. Turcotte, “so this novel blends, and bends, all sorts of things together.”
The Space Between explores the ups and downs of life, with laughter and a palatable amount of self-deprecation. The novel might comfortably share a shelf with the likes of John R. Powers’ The Last Catholic in America.
The novel has four main sections, which revolve around the protagonist’s early faith life and his comic attempts to educate others about the faith (“a lot of the bible is set in Canada, because we know Jesus died in Calgary”); the experience of switching schools; and the boy’s ill-advised attempts to make contact with the opposite sex.
The fourth section, which follows the protagonist’s experience watching his mother descend “suddenly and catastrophically” into illness, almost didn’t happen.
Turcotte told the gathering he originally avoided the final section because it was inspired by his own mother and her experience with illness. “I didn’t want to tell the mother’s story because it is a very tragic story,” he said, “but my mom was a heroic individual, and she said, ‘You know what? you’re going to tell my story, you’re not getting out of it.’”
“She just found a way into the book—but it was not planned.”
With Dr. Turcotte’s permission we have published the opening chapter of The Space Between below.
My Career as an Altar Boy
When I turned nine, I became an altar boy at the local church. I remember the lovely uniform I got to wear, and the exquisite smell of the incense in the change rooms. On my first day the priest, Fr. Rémi, explained that I would lead the procession out into the church, carrying the gold crucifix on a long silver pole. ‘Hold it up proudly,’ he said, but he forgot to warn me about the low archway.
I was demoted to bell ringer. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you when you’re meant to ring them.’
At the altar, during the most sacred ceremony on my first day of serving Mass, I looked out at the four people in the congregation. Two of these were my parents, who had fought their way through the worse snowstorm of the year to watch their son’s great triumph. They were smiling up at me, waving surreptitiously. I was about to wave back when I felt the priest’s foot poking me in the ribs.
I looked up at him and he stood with the oversized host raised in his hands. He was looking up towards the ceiling, but his mouth was angled down.
‘Now, boy. Ring the bell.’ I started ringing for my life. The sound was magical. It reminded me of Christmas—of sleigh bells. I lowered my head and shut my eyes so tightly that I actually saw stars. And I rang those bells. I thought to myself, ‘No one will ever ring these as well or as loudly.’
The priest kicked me sharply in the ribs and knocked the breath out of me. ‘For goodness sake, knock it off!’ he said.
I stared up at him through watery eyes. ‘But you said….’ I began.
‘Shh!’ he whispered, slipping briefly into Latin, and then, correcting himself, repeating the words in English.
He nudged me again, gently this time, and I let forth with another tremendous ring of the bells that he cut short with such a sharp jab of his foot that I let out a yell. Make up your mind, I thought angrily!
Later, because of my unfamiliarity with the vestments, I found that I was the last one in the change room. The priest seemed pleased to find me there. He moved in and poked his flushed face in my vicinity.
He seemed terribly uncomfortable. I watched his mouth, as he said, ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad,’ and then only half understood as he explained that perhaps I wasn’t cut out for this. Years later, when I thought about this time, I wondered insecurely if I was the only altar boy ever to be fired. At the time, though, I only felt relief.
Outside the church, in the blistery winter air, my mother hugged me tightly. She was crying.
‘You were so good,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you could hear those bells all over town.’
Dr. Turcotte is a contributor to The B.C. Catholic, and the author of 23 books. The Space between is available on Amazon and from his publisher, En Route Media.
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