Review of Blue Vengeance

Blue Vengeance

Alison Preston creates a perfect balance between realism and mystery, between humour and intrigue, between elegance and boyish awkward charm. Danny Blue is destined to be a character icon in CanLit, the epitome of coming-of-age protagonists in Canadian fiction. And all along, the reader is put at ease by the quirky but controlled prose of Preston. Blue Vengeance is a novel devoid of pretension and filled with spirit and verve.


Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction jury citation

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Blue Vengeance

It’s a pleasure to talk about a new book, one that has just been launched. Blue Vengeance, Alison Preston’s seventh novel, takes us once again to Norwood, the Winnipeg suburb where she grew up and where she still lives. This time, the action takes place in 1964 and centres on 13-year-old Danny Blue, who embarks on a quest to make the person responsible for his sister Cookie’s death pay for the crime.

Preston’s take on Norwood is deadpan funny and more than slightly askew. But her characters struggle with devastating issues, making choices that are often messy and morally fraught. Though her books have mysterious elements, they are much less conventional than the “mystery” label would suggest and have an elusive quality that is intriguing.

CM: What is it about 1964 that made you want to set the book in that time?

AP: When I realized the book was going to be about young teenagers, I knew I had to set it in the past. I didn’t want the action and interaction to be built around hand-held electronic devices.
 And then when I realized the exact age of the characters (Danny 13 turning 14, and Janine 15 turning 16), 1964 muscled its way in. That was the year that I turned 15, and it is vivid in my memory, partly because of the Beatles turning up on Ed Sullivan, partly because that was the year of my first real boyfriend – the one with whom the kisses really counted – and the serious heart-break that went along with that.

CM: How did you get into the head of a 13-year-old boy from 1964? Was it totally an act of imagination? Or did you do research?

AP: I think it was an osmosis kind of thing. I have a brother; I’ve always had a brother. I played with him, hung around with him, followed him, pestered him. I insinuated myself into his friendships.
And I always had friends who were boys. And remained so. I think deep down we’re all still young teenagers.
I researched practicalities with my brother, like with slingshot usage. He was flabbergasted by my ignorance. So I incorporated that into the book with Paul’s amazement at Danny’s stupidity (not knowing he couldn’t hit moving objects) and his disgust with the feebleness of Danny’s shooting at leaves. And with another slingshot–related revelation that comes towards the end of the book. I won’t divulge that one.

CM: One of the pleasures of Blue Vengeance is that some characters from your other books make strategic appearances. The noble Frank Foote, your usual hero, is the person who finds Cookie Blue’s drowned body. And Morven Rankin from The Girl in the Wall provides information at a key moment, like a 1964 Delphic oracle. Do you get as much pleasure from the walk-ons of these characters as your readers?

AP: I do, indeed, get pleasure from placing characters from other books in a new novel. And thank you for saying that there’s a possibility that readers may enjoy this too.
I was worried that no one would like Morven Rankin (from The Girl in the Wall). When a friend mentioned that she liked her a lot and hoped I would put her in another book I was ecstatic. At first Morv just had a tiny role in Blue Vengeance: the scene in which Danny and Janine walked past her and her brother George, and neither she nor Janine said hello. But then I enlarged her presence with the unpleasant scene in the gymnasium and then further to the Delphic oracle. I loved doing that.

CM: You often write about children grappling with very grown-up problems on their own. And these children are very astute observers of adult foibles. What attracts you about the world of childhood?

AP: I identify with children grappling with grown-up problems on their own. At the risk of sounding like I had a horrible childhood (which I didn’t), I was often left on my own to grapple with grown-up problems. Childhood in 1964 looks relatively golden to me. I loved spending the time it took to write Blue Vengeance in that golden place.


— Catherine Macdonald Portage and Slain

Blue Vengeance

Alison Preston relates her seventh novel from the point of view of a boy in his early teens—and she nails it. In fact, the charm of this engaging book comes from our being able to see not only the boy’s daily adjustment to his sister’s recent death and his mother’s sickly ineptitude, but also the way his need for revenge on his sister’s behalf clashes with his own sexual awakening.

Preston goes back to May, 1964, in the Winnipeg district she knows so well, the Norwood Flats. We first meet protagonist Danny Blue at his sister Cookie’s funeral, trying to cope with his own awkward bereavement and the adults' annoying attempts to comfort him.

Though not a typical murder mystery—it has a body in the first chapter, but no immediate challenge to find out whodunit—Preston drops in clues early on. The reader is cautioned to keep track of all details.

Danny is 13 and he’s angry. He’s had a falling-out with his best friend Paul and has to cater to his mother, a fibrositis-sufferer. His anger grows: “He needed to kill someone. That was the thing he needed to do. If he took a life, a bad one, it could help to even out with what had happened to Cookie. It was worth a try.”

Cookie had demons, but Danny convinces himself her phys-ed teacher, Miss Hartley, is responsible for Cookie’s death. He decides his best weapon is a slingshot. This becomes an obsession and, as summer holidays approach, he’s shooting 250 stones a day.

Cookie’s schoolmate Janine, hates Miss "Hardass" too and offers to become Danny’s accomplice. Unsure if he wants help, or that she knows he has killing in mind, Danny falls for her: “He had known her for only three days, but he couldn’t imagine a day without her. If she moved away, or worse, stopped wanting to hang around with him, he wouldn’t be able to stand it… It was a real worry, because the thing was, Janine was a girl. And not only that, she was probably two years older than he was. It made no sense for her to be his best friend.”

They see a lot of each other over the summer, and Preston convincingly shows the Danny-Janine friendship developing in the pastoral suburban setting, They plot, with Janine gradually taking the lead. It’s an uneasy summer calm before a planned fall catastrophe.

Fans of Alison Preston’s previous six novels—she won the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction for her last one, The Girl in the Wall—will recognize and embrace the setting, as well as the mighty Red River so close by, the “monkey speedway” along its bank, the “dale” streets. Frank Foote, a main character in most Preston novels, puts in a cameo appearance; he’s 15 and is the one who found Cookie in the river.

Blue Vengeance has all the best features of a mystery—it’s plot-driven, has beautifully handled surprises and its own brand of tension that keeps you turning the pages—and more. We watch a murder being planned by two kids and, instead of being appalled, we find ourselves cheering them on.

Alison Preston has succeeded in giving us a realistic, rich coming-of-age novel, made all the more enchanting by its setting—a special part of Winnipeg 50 years ago, when kids had more freedom and when the only hand-held device was a slingshot.


— Dave Williamson Winnipeg Free Press

Blue Vengeance

Feeling Blue 
Preston's latest mystery novel a twist on the revenge story.  

Blue Vengeance,
Alison Preston's latest mystery is a new take on the revenge story.  Danny Blue, the main character, is a young boy with a slingshot in the 1960s, the same era Preston grew up in.

"I didn't want to set it in the present day because I didn't want the kids to be carrying around hand-held electronic devices," she says. "And I wanted them to have the freedom to be out and around town on their own.  Even the kids whose parents cared about them were given far more freedom in those days.  Also, I was a kid in the '60s so I was able to call up my own memories (including feelings) from that time."
The novel transports the reader to a time when summer meant kids were free to roam where they wished and forced to find their own amusement lest they be recruited for chores by the nearest adult.  It is a time before helicopter parenting and electronic gadgetry, when free expression and a youthful sense of right and wrong go hand in hand.

Both that time period and the place, Winnipeg's Norwood Flats, where Preston grew up, are also when and where The Girl in the Wall, her previous novel, takes place.  She says of the two novels, "They both have mysterious elements.  In both books the whys are more important than the whos."

Examining the motivations behind the action means the characters are rich and developed. Young Danny is plotting revenge, with an attention to detail, on the person whom he believes responsible for his sister Cookie's death at 15.  The recent tragedy has left Danny more alone than ever before - no father and an ill mother do little to make him feel as though he has a family. 

The lack of adults in his life leaves Danny free to plot, and he is not entirely alone - connections with other engaging characters develop, characters like Paul, who doesn't understand Danny's obsession with slingshot practice; Janine, two years older and one of Cookie's only friends; and Frank Foote, the boy who found and tried to save his sister. 

The novel began as a mental image.  "A picture of a young boy in a graveyard staring at a coffin came to me," says Preston. "In the rain.  That's what I started with. And then one thing led to another.  Who was dead in the coffin? Why was she dead at such a young age? How was the boy going to deal with it?"

A focus on character does not take away from the other elements. The plot rings true - the pacing of Blue Vengeance is like a summer day, easy and enjoyable. 

Though the novel deals with death and depression, it moves in a positive direction - through Danny's self-examination and growth, the reader experiences the challenges of being a kid and the nostalgia of summers not-so-long ago. 

Preston hopes readers take away one thing: "Enjoyment. Pleasure at having read a book they liked."


— Yvonne Dick Prairie Books NOW

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