A Review: Shirking Ambition in Dual Citizens By Alix Ohlin
Having read Bellevue Square and The Innocents, I’ve been making my way through this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize nominees, which brings me to today’s review, Dual Citizens by Alix Ohlin.
The novel presents an intimate look into the lives of two sisters, Lark and Robin, following them from childhood to motherhood, and told through the close perspective of the older sister, Lark. The two of them grow up in Montreal, under the tutelage of an absent mother named Marianne, who is trying desperately to hold onto her own youth and importance.
Of her father, Lark states: “I’ve never looked for my father. I like to think he has regrets, that sometimes he wakes at night believing someone has spoken to him, a voice he doesn’t know but nonetheless recognizes; that sometimes, when he sees a woman my age, he wonders if that’s what his daughter looks like, walks like. This is my right, to think about him as I please, since he’s never been around to contradict me.”
When I read that passage I felt like I was reading the diary entry of a living person. It was raw and sad and reeked of an earnestness I found refreshing. I also thought I had, less than ten pages in, pegged Lark as someone who would be searching for love to fill a hole that her parents had left in her. In some ways she’s that character, but I don’t think she fulfills those tropes in the end.
Most of the world—including her parents—see Lark as largely invisible, cast to the shadows of those around her, but it’s not a position she actively tries to resist. To me, she seems relatively happy to be on the sidelines, helping those around her realize their own ambitions and dreams.
“This was my ideal situation, to be present and listening in one room while the action happened in the next...”
Robin, her sister, is the ostensibly ambitious one. As children, their mother was rarely home, leaving for days on end and letting the two girls run around the neighbourhood. They discovered a witch-turned-piano-teacher who began to teach Robin piano. They would become two sides of the same coin, with Robin absorbing enough attention for the both of them.
At Worthern College in Boston, Lark would find her own passion in film, fall in love with a boy, and meet a lifelong mentor in her film teacher, Olga. One thing that Alix does well is introduce these instrumental characters in Robin and Lark’s lives, who seem to follow them throughout the novel.
One day in the summer after her first year, Robin shows up at her door. The two girls united, they grow closer than they ever have before. Robin enrolls in a local high school and starts learning Piano from one of the college teachers.
At this point in the novel, about a third of the way through, the reader has been sold a story about two girls who would go on to succeed in their respective fields: filmmaking and music.
But what the reader gets is entirely different. What we get is refutation of ambition for two completely different reasons.
Lark never really tries to succeed at filmmaking. She once again relegates herself to the shadows, editing films in a backroom, and is happy to do so. She teams up, both romantically and professionally, with Lawrence Wheelock, a docu-filmmaker who garners almost all of the attention of critics, even leaving her out of his acceptance speeches.
This represents a period of her life which seems rather dull and depressing. Years pass in the monotony of her work, which, as a 32 year old man whose yesterday looks in every way the same as his tomorrow, felt true-to-form. The book during this part reads much slower, but moves through time much faster—again something I feel represents someone in their early 30s. This lasts until one day she simply picks up and leaves, moving back to New York.
At the same time, Robin leaves on a european tour, and, in a move that perhaps inspires her sister to do the same (I’m just now realizing how many of their acts seem to echo each other's), she disappears from the tour altogether, seemingly abandoning her forced-upon-her dreams of becoming a world famous pianist.
While one of Alix’s greatest strengths seems to be her pacing, with short chapters, intriguing first paragraphs and final, punctuating sentences, I did have a hard time getting through the brief period where Robin exits the book.
One of the difficulties of having a character like Lark, who is so reserved and shy, is that if there are no interesting characters around her, the story itself can lag a bit. With the filmmaker Wheelock as the main supporting character for a period, a man who himself is reserved and quiet, the book itself becomes quiet.
But this represents a small and necessary part of the book and Lark’s life.
Despite that, she was able to create a rich cast of characters who seem incredibly vivid and real and personal. The reader will feel like they understand the characters at a level that’s deeper than the words of the page.
Her use of language is varied and she has a flare for adding in details to her sentences that bring the world to life.
If spanning nearly 30 years of a woman’s genuine and timid perspective as she shirks ambition interests you, I highly recommend this book. It’s absolutely deserving of its Scotiabank Giller Nomination.
P.S. I’m like 90% this scene is a seinfeld reference:
“Like, literally, nothing?”
“Sat in my apartment. Stared at the walls until it was time to come back here.”
And Alix gave me a strong “maybe.”
