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Love Minus Zero
by Lori Hahnel
Ottawa: Oberon Press,
2008, ISBN 978-0-7780-1331-0, 159 pp., $21.95 paper.
Calgarian Lori Hahnel's first novel is in some ways a report from the pop-music sub-culture, following the fortunes of an all-girl rock band. As such, it brings to mind another recent novel about pop music, A Raw Mix of Carelessness and Longing, by another Calgary writer, Cecilia Frey.
Like A Raw Mix, Love Minus Zero is very much a love story told in the first person by a female protagonist who falls head-over-heels for a charismatic guy. Where Frey's Lilah joins up with Jamey as a musical twosome who follow their dream--at least for a while--Hahnel's Kate Brandt has to be content with Niall Graham's dropping in and out of her life.
Kate begins her story in 2006 at her friend Jude's wedding, where she sees Niall for the first time in ages. Then she flashes back to her school days, circa 1979-80, when she and Niall met at St. Dymphna--it "was supposed to be a jock school [yet] there were all these people into music." (26)
Kate takes us through her adolescent years in Calgary, living with her angry and drunken mother Carmen and forming a band with three friends, a band they call Misclairol. It's a time when punk is popular, but Kate's group likes the "poppy and sixties-influenced" variation. "Bands like The Clash and The Buzzcocks, for instance, had a way with a catchy tune and clever lyrics, didn't just scream obscenities about Nazis and dead babies." (29) It's that modified punk that Misclairol makes their own.
"I . . . had stage fright something fierce the day of gigs," the likeable Kate tells us. "The weird thing was, I was starting to find that once we got onstage and got going, I enjoyed it more than I ever thought possible. I'd never imagined the adrenalin rush I got from playing, and it was pretty addictive." (34)
Kate leaves home and moves into a house Jude is looking after. She works part-time and postpones further schooling as she writes songs and the band opens for headliners at venues like The National and The Calgarian. Niall is also involved with a band, and she and he become an item.
In one of their happier nights together, as they're sharing a joint, Niall tells her that what he likes about her is that she's "nice." Her reaction is a good summing-up of herself: "That's just my problem. I'm terminally nice. I mean, what do I have to do to be bad? I play in a rock band, I drink, I smoke drugs, swear like a sailor, stay up all night and have sex with you whenever I can. And I'm still a nice girl." (63)
Niall eventually heads east to go to university. Despite her friends' warnings that he isn't worth bothering with, Kate carries a torch for him.
Author Hahnel gives us some vivid pictures of the places where rockers live. Here's one: "John lived in a two-storey, three-bedroom house with three other guys, all in various bands and in various states of employment and unemployment. Old tires and plastic milk crates decorated their living-room. People constantly came and went and played music in the basement. At John's it was hard to tell a party from the usual state of affairs." (75)
Misclairol gets something of a break--a one-year contract in Tuktoyaktuk--and while there Kate has a fling with a guy named James. Once the contract is over, Misclairol breaks up, but the novel is still 70 pages from the end.
The demands of plot cause Hahnel to descend into melodrama. She valiantly tries to make Kate's post-band life interesting: Kate for a time accepts Jude's lesbian overtures; Kate writes erotica and gets paid for it while she goes to university; she falls for and marries a professor whom she soon leaves when he cheats on her; she has miscarriages; her mother dies; her prostitute friend Maggie kills herself; and Niall shows up when she least expects him.
These plot twists seem forced--an author trying too hard. Perhaps the answer is simply to contrast Kate's present-day life with her rock-band life and forget the in-between years.
Hahnel is at her best when she's focusing on the rock-band scene, one she knows well because she was a founding member of The Virgins, Calgary's first all-female rock band.
Dave Williamson is a Winnipeg novelist and reviewer.