Review by Rebecca Jane
Count On Me untangles knotted emotions, traumas, and stories that connect grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. On its surface, this realistic novel, set during the 2010s in Canada, tells the story of a single mother, Tia Pysar, who struggles alone to raise her young daughter at the same time her aging parents need, yet also push away, Tia’s assistance. Her daughter wakes to nurse every night, throws tantrums against in the car seat, and proves slower than other kids in learning to dress herself. While Tia attempts to give this daughter a more loving childhood than she ever had, Tia’s aging parents risk losing everything they have built as immigrants from Poland. Both parents endured World War II in Poland as children. Consequently, in old age, Tia’s father suffers from dementia paired with PTSD while her mother suffers from PTSD, abuse, and a mysterious illness that doctors cannot identify. On top of this, Tia’s older brother, Tristan, manipulates her, making her question her capabilities. This same older brother, together with his girlfriend pose a looming threat to Tia’s ailing parents.
Keen perception of the oft-overlooked experience of elder abuse paired with a gritty but hopeful outlook on the unglamourous challenges faced by single parents today generate this novel’s astonishing emotional intensity. The narrative’s pacing and precision create a sense of fast pace and gripping storytelling using relatable circumstances that aren’t as mundane as they seem.
It’s hard to believe this novel is a debut, because it reads like a mature work. Author Ann Cavlovic, whose work has appeared in CBC First Person, The Globe and Mail, Fiddlehead, PRISM international, writes powerful prose. Her play Emissions: a Climate Comedy won “Best in Fest” at the 2013 Ottawa Fringe Festival, affirming Cavlovic’s impressive skill with drama and comedy.
Count On Me includes witty lines, and it also showcases a wide cast of familiar characters: doctors, social workers, lawyers, elder abuse guardians, babysitters, play groups, teachers, an ex-lover, colleagues, an older brother not getting help and displaying questionable morals, his manipulative girlfriend, and cranky toddlers. Told from Tia’s perspective, the seriousness of rules and red-tape, people’s mental instability and manipulative actions create devastation in a reader and fuel Tia’s feelings of self-doubt. However, she finds ways to crack a joke. Tia also displays powers of introspection and sensitivity that give the story satisfying dynamism. While loving kindness is a vital feature missing from the Pysar family, Tia’s sensitivity reveals an ability to help heal deep and infected psychological wounds that need urgent care.
This novel wrestles with these, and more, important questions: How do an estranged brother and sister resolve property disputes and make pivotal healthcare decisions for ailing parents? When mental wellness hangs in the balance, and therapists help but also reveal limitations, how do families navigate complex laws, paperwork, wounds, and healing? What happens when a woman feels invisible throughout her life, but then someone finally sees her side of the story? What responsibility do we owe the next generation, if we were raised by emotionally unavailable people who have been impacted for life by the trauma of world war?
In her profession, Tia works as an auditor for the Canada Revenue Agency, and while she is investigating her brother’s takeover of her parents’ assets and juggling childcare for her daughter, she is working with the CRA to investigate non-profits and their involvement with political activism. This subplot confronts issues where the environment is at stake.
This is an important novel with rich content that deserves discussion in college courses, book clubs, playgroups, and families.
Tia may be a brilliant accountant with a career in Canada, but back in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, Tia’s grandmother was forced to work on a German vineyard. At six-years-old, Tia’s mother ran away from Poland, boarded a train for Germany, and fended for herself. Tia’s mother repeats this story over-and-over, into her old age. The novel shows how Tia confronts this, holds space for it, and builds up resistance to internalizing the hurt. Characters’ actions become deep ruminations on ways we surrender or resist when it comes to passing trauma along to the next generation.
Count On Me by Ann Cavlovic
Guernica Editions: Essential Prose 357 pages, paper $22.95 CAN / $18.95 USA
ISBN: 978-1-77183-946-4
Rebecca Jane is the author of She Bleeds Sestinas, which was a finalist for a Best Book Award in 2023. She works as a freelance writer, ghostwriter, and poet who travels to Asia to study yoga, Sanskrit, and Mandarin. She lives with her daughters on unceded Kumeyaay land. (San Diego, California).