Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Monkey Beach, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Living and the Dead
Myths, Magic, and Monsters
Abuse and Historical Trauma
Protest and Power
Love and Family
Summary
Analysis
In his old age, Lisa considers, Weegit the raven has mellowed. His trickster habits have morphed into playing the stock market and putting P.R. spin on all his crazy pranks. Now he’s respectable. Only his sly smile shows how much he still loves pulling the wool over people’s eyes.
As Lisa lands on Monkey Beach, she reflects on the way Weegit, the traditional trickster figure of Haisla mythology, has “grown up” in ways that bring him into line with 21st century life (playing the stock market, womanizing) rather than the tricks he used to play earlier in history. This suggests the ways in which Indigenous cultures continue to thrive—and to be a productive force—in the modern world, reminding readers that Indigenous People belong to the present and future as much everyone else.
Themes
As she ties the boat on the sandy shore of Monkey Beach and settles in for a smoke, Lisa can hear the voices in the trees. The last time she was here with Jimmy, she remembers, was 1988, after two years of partying and doing drugs, first in the village, and then in Vancouver, where she went when she dropped out of school in 11th grade. In a flashback to that era, Lisa thinks about how drinking and partying makes her feel cool and gives her a temporary popularity boost, at least until her monthly trust-fund allowance runs out and her so-called friends disappear. In retrospect, she will realize that most of her “friends” from this time were anything but.
The voices Lisa hears immediately recall the strange and dangerous voice she heard in the woods when she went to burn her clothes after her rape. The spirit world offers immense raw power, but since no one has ever been able to teach Lisa how to properly channel and use her gifts, that power poses a threat as well as a promise to her. At that time, the voices offered her a chance at revenge which she ignored, instinctively recognizing the danger in accepting. Unfortunately, Lisa didn’t make the same choice when it came to other dangerous, self-destructive activities like drinking and partying. In her attempts to run away from rather than face the pain and suffering caused by Mick’s death, Ma-ma-oo’s death, and other events from her childhood, Lisa lashes out in self-destructive ways that cause her more pain and suffering in the end.
Themes
One day, Lisa wakes up in a cheap hotel bathroom to find a furious Tab leaning over her. In the adjacent bedroom, nine unfamiliar people lay passed out. Tab picks her way through them with evident distaste, then she leads Lisa to a scuzzy skid-row diner. Lisa orders coffee; the waitress ignores Tab, who looks angrier with each passing minute. Lisa expects Tab to give her a “you’re-ruining-your-life” lecture, but she remains silent for a long time. Finally, Tab points out that Lisa’s “asshole friends” left her alone the night before with a bunch of strangers. Tab warns her that she won’t always have Tab’s help. Lisa isn’t the only person to ever have loved ones die, she continues, but she is the only one in the family wallowing in eternal misery.
In a few moments, Lisa will realize that this Tab isn’t really Tab, but a message from the spirit realm. Still, the message comes to Lisa in the form of her cousin, since the Hill family tries to be—and is—a source of mutual love and support for each other, despite everyone’s personal struggles and weaknesses. Tab brings a clear, succinct message: Lisa needs to get over herself and learn to live with the suffering and pain of the losses in her life. She can’t stay stuck in misery forever.
Themes
Lisa trails Tab out of the diner and tries to make a peace offering of a cigarette. But when she tosses the pack at Tab, it sails right through Tab’s body. Lisa clutches her temples and tries to protest that Tab can’t be dead. Tab tells Lisa to “wake up and smell the piss.” She says she’s just been killed by some “boozehound rednecks” and still feels very angry at Lisa. Then she disappears, leaving Lisa to wonder if she is hallucinating.
Given the losses she’s already suffered, it makes sense for Lisa to assume that the ghostly Tab implies her cousin’s death. As such, Tab provides a gruesome and vivid warning about the dangers Lisa faces if she continues her life of drunken escapism. There’s a lot of danger in living on the edges of society, especially for Indigenous women, who (as Aunt Trudy has already pointed out) broader society seems to hold in little esteem or value.
Themes
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Lisa returns “home” to the dinky hotel room where she is staying. She sits and listens to the sounds of the bar below. Time blurs, and when she gets herself a Pepsi from the vending machine, she realizes that she’s spent three days alone for the first time in months. Cautiously, she goes outside. She knows her so-called friends will begin to feel her out in a day or two when her trust fund pays out. Usually, she succumbs to the temptation to play Queen Bee. This time, she decides to spend some of the money on a fresh haircut and a manicure. She spends over an hour bathing herself in the hotel’s shared bathroom. She asks for an upgrade to the luxury suite (which has an electric burner) and makes herself a cup of tea while her friends pound on the door.
It seems that the spirits sent the vision of Tab when Lisa was ready to hear its message. Lisa cautiously begins to explore what it might mean to take care of herself rather than to engage in self-destructive behaviors. Slowly, she begins to return to the land of the living, even though she knows that it will require her to reckon with her losses and her pain and to accept responsibility for using her life and her energies productively.
Themes
The next day, Lisa decides to visit Aunt Trudy, reasoning that if Tab truly is dead, her aunt needs comfort. She arrives to find not the expected party, but Trudy in the middle of packing for a move. Josh has gotten her a new place in “Native housing,” and Trudy is going to rehab after the move. Tab—who is still alive—will be able to take care of herself for a while, Trudy reasons. Trudy tells Lisa how upset and worried Mom and Dad are and offers Lisa a place to crash for as long as she needs.
Lisa and Trudy both try to make a fresh start at this time. This suggests both the importance of the project—Lisa has so much more of her life ahead of her and does not want to waste as many years in pain and suffering as Trudy—and points towards the trauma that Trudy suffered during her own childhood, which reverberates well into her adult years. And despite her own troubles, Trudy welcomes Lisa with open arms, because a good family provides love and mutual support no matter what.
Themes
Just then, Josh arrives to pick Trudy up for a date. He and Trudy drag Lisa to a bar she used to frequent with her friends. Sober, she realizes how grungy and seedy the place is. She sips a plain orange juice when Frank suddenly walks in, pushing past his uncle Josh without acknowledgment. Josh claims that his nephew holds a grudge over his refusal to cosign a car loan for him. While Trudy refills her beer, Josh confides that he doesn’t expect Trudy to make it through rehab. After he brings up Mick, Lisa asks what he knows about Cookie. Josh explains that someone tied her up, put her in a car, and set it on fire. The police ruled her death a suicide.
The message from the spirit world arrived just in time for Lisa, ensuring that she’s sober and ready to pick up the pieces of her life when Frank suddenly—as if by magic—appears in Vancouver. Their tense encounter at the bar points towards the strife between Josh and his nieces and nephews which the book has hinted at before, although the full outlines of it won’t become clear to Lisa for quite some time yet. Josh’s conversation with Lisa focuses readers’ attention on the violence and abuse carried out against Indigenous Peoples in the distant and recent past, from Trudy’s traumatic time at residential school to Cookie’s violent death. It also helps contextualize some of Mick’s sadness and aimlessness in life. While the book claims that Lisa needs to deal with her losses to grow up, it does not shy away from presenting losses and torments so horrible that they’re impossible to truly get beyond. Lisa needs to find a way to use her fighting spirit to survive in a world that can be impossibly cruel, for her survival in itself rebukes the racism and violence that has sought to oppress Indigenous Peoples.
Themes
Trudy ends the conversation and pulls Josh to the dance floor. Frank comes up while Lisa stands in the long line for the bathroom. She doesn’t know what to say to him, so she feels grateful when Karaoke—whom Frank had come to Vancouver to fetch—interrupts them. Back in the bar, a cluster of women, including Trudy and Karaoke, surround Josh. Karaoke begs him for money while the other women marvel that the rehab sits at the same location as the old residential school. Claiming to have a headache, Lisa begs for Trudy’s keys and escapes the bar. When she struggles to hail a cab, Frank offers to take her back to Trudy’s place. He explains that he’s come to Vancouver to fetch Karaoke for Pooch’s funeral, who recently took his own life.
Trudy must revisit the site of her trauma to access the rehabilitation care that might free her from the results of that trauma, suggesting rather pointedly that historical violence and trauma aren’t confined to the past. And these cycles of trauma have also claimed Pooch, whose suicide, the book implies, relates to the loss of his family and his safe home after his grandmother—his last remaining parent figure—died. Bereft of her support, he does not know how to go on.
Themes
Early the next morning, clutching her meager plastic bag of possessions, Lisa climbs into the car with Frank. Karaoke dozes in the backseat. After a few hours of driving, Frank stops at a 24-hour diner for breakfast. He asks Lisa if she still sees ghosts, and she says she does, sometimes. Frank says he had a vision of Pooch on the day he died. He tries to tell Lisa what Pooch said but becomes so panicky that she changes the subject to soothe and distract him. The pair commiserate about their no-account lives. They trade driving duties while Karaoke sleeps through the entire day.
The small plastic bag of clothes recalls the day that Lisa went into the woods after her rape and suggests that she’s at a similarly desperate moment now. It suggests the terrible state of her life, which her memories otherwise only sketch broadly. Frank’s death-message visitation from Pooch reminds Lisa of how thin the barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead is, and although she doesn’t have access to her full power (bereft of the kind of training her medicine woman great-grandmother had), she does find herself in a position to help Frank out, since she’s more experienced with ghostly visitations.
Themes
Lisa is driving near sunset when a squall kicks up. Rounding a curve, she sees a figure emerge from the bushes and jog across the road. She slams on the breaks. The figure jolts in surprise and then trots into the trees, but not before she notices the brown shaggy fur, sharply tilted forehead, and pointy teeth of a sasquatch. Lisa pulls over and jumps out of the car, rousing Frank. For a moment, Lisa considers telling him about her b’gwus sighting, but she hedges and tells him she saw a moose. Frank climbs back into the car, but Lisa stands on the side of the road until she can no longer hear the sasquatch’s retreat. The realization that magical things still exist in the world comforts her deeply.
The sasquatch sighting gives Lisa hope for the first time since Mick’s death and offers her a sign that she’s on the right path. Tellingly, she keeps the sighting secret—both, perhaps, because she fears Frank won’t believe her, and because the sasquatch connects her to her childhood and to her happy memories with her family.
Themes
In the present, Lisa approaches the slim beach through water, which unseen rocks make choppy. In the distance, a bear paws at seaweed in the sand and then stands on its hind legs and ambles off, looking almost human. Lisa hears voices calling her name from the forest. She’s exhausted from the trip, and although she still has at least six or seven hours of boating left to get to Namu, the tide is going out. She really should leave, but she wants to stay on the beach. She can feel the power and magic of this place; the voices whisper that they can help her.
The bear on Monkey Beach recalls the bear Lisa encountered when she went oolichan hunting with Mom and Mick many years before. It suggests the cycles of life and that, although Lisa leaves home and leaves her childhood, these places still exert a power and influence over her current life. The oddly human bear also sounds like a shapeshifter, thus evoking the magical and mythical and warning Lisa that she’s about to enter a place where the boundary between waking and spirit realms is especially thin.
Themes
The b’gwus (sasquatches) favor Monkey Beach in part because their favorite seafood—cockles and clams—like to spawn there. But they also inhabit a wide range of territories elsewhere, from the Pacific Northwest of the United States, where they go by the name “bigfoot,” to the Himalayas, where they are called “Yeti” and “Abominable Snowmen.” Many people consider him a myth, a hokey draw for tourists. But others seriously debate his existence in papers, conferences, and on the internet. Although most claimed sightings feature solitary males, many believe that they have a complex social structure. Some reports claim the b’gwus killed themselves out through civil strife; others believe they succumbed to starvation or disease. Sometimes, very late at night, people still hear them howling in the woods. Lisa shakes herself out of her consideration of sasquatch natural history and begins to bail out the boat.
The sasquatch forms such an elegant symbol for the possibility of magic in the book precisely because it’s just as impossible to deny its existence as it is to prove it. Those who believe and those who can see sasquatch cannot be convinced of its nonexistence. In a similar way, Lisa knows that her experiences with the spirit world, although inexplicable and mysterious, cannot be denied. The idea of the sasquatch suggests that there is more in the world than we can see with our eyes and our narrow human understanding. In this description, the sasquatches also become a sort of metaphor for the Indigenous Peoples of North America, who had a complex social structure and history of their own, but whom white settlers considered uncivilized, under-evolved savages. Their systematic efforts to destroy Indigenous cultures essentially cut off modern Indigenous people from their roots, rendering their pasts almost as mythical as sasquatch itself.
Themes
The narrative shifts to Lisa’s memory of Pooch’s funeral, where she sits between Frank and Karaoke. They stay in the back of the crowd at the cemetery. Afterward, they go back to Frank’s apartment. Although Frank and Karaoke seem to know why Pooch died by suicide, they refuse to talk about it. Around midnight, another cousin invites them to a party; Frank stays home, but Lisa tags along with Karaoke. She freezes when she sees Cheese in the corner, who hails her as “Freaky” and starts singing the theme of Ghostbusters.
Although she’s back in town, Lisa clearly doesn’t know how her family will react after her running away to Vancouver and she doubts their forgiveness, hanging with her old crowd instead of going home. Both the fact of Pooch’s suicide and Cheese’s insensitive greeting suggest that, although one cannot revisit or live in the past, its events continue to affect life long afterwards.
Themes
Karaoke is trying to convince a totally inebriated Cheese to go home when Jimmy enters the room. Lisa hasn’t seen him in a while, and his shoulder-length, chlorine-lightened hair surprises her. His eyes land on Karaoke, and he breaks into a broad smile; Karaoke notices his attention and abandons Cheese to his own devices. Lisa turns to slip out the back door, then comes face to face with Jimmy. He demands to know where she has been. She asks about swimming and is shocked to learn that he’s quit.
But Lisa can’t escape her past any more than anyone else. She also discovers, to her shock, that she’s not the only member of the family to have suffered painful losses—although he doesn’t explain why (suggesting that he remains lost in his own grief), Jimmy’s swimming career has ended.
Themes
Jimmy offers to walk Lisa back to the motel and ends up talking her into going home. When she opens the door, Mom looks strange without her makeup or jewelry on. She offers Lisa coffee and asks how Pooch’s brothers are taking his death. She says she will call Erica if Lisa wants to stay elsewhere. When Jimmy leaves to pick up Dad from the night shift, Mom and Lisa lapse into an awkward silence, unsure what to say to each other.
Although it’s clear that things have changed in the family dynamic since her departure, Mom and Dad and Jimmy welcome Lisa home more or less with open arms, showing their love for her and demonstrating the ways that a good family provides a safe and welcoming harbor from life’s storms.
Themes
While Mom makes up Lisa’s bed, Lisa asks why Jimmy quit swimming. Mom explains that he injured himself recently by dislocating his shoulder. The timing of that injury squashed his Olympic hopes. Later that evening, Dad comes into Lisa’s room. His emaciated state shocks her.
Tellingly, Lisa learns about Jimmy’s injury from Mom instead of her brother; although he downplays the loss, it clearly affects him—and the rest of the family—deeply. Like Lisa before him, however, Jimmy’s denial predisposes him to dangerous choices.
Themes
Four days later, Erica stops by with her daughter—she graduated on time before having a baby with her boyfriend. When Lisa announces that she’s going back to school starting in January, Mom, Dad, and Erica place bets on how long she will last. Jimmy points out that if Lisa takes summer school classes, they can graduate together. For Lisa’s 19th birthday that year, Mom buys a cake from the store and asks where Lisa wants to eat; she chooses the Chinese restaurant where Ma-ma-oo used to order dry spareribs. Mom gives Lisa beautifully mellow-sounding windchimes; Dad gives her a copy of the monkey mask Mick carved; and Jimmy gives her an ugly, Elvis-themed clock.
Lisa’s family teases her with their bets about her success, but it’s clear that they all want her to succeed even if they fear she might fail. But even if she does, their light attitudes suggest, they will continue to love and support her as she figures out how to make her way in the world. The birthday gifts show both their care and how Lisa (like everyone) maintains continuity with her past even as she grows up and life events change her. The Elvis clock recalls Mick (since Elvis was his favorite); the sasquatch mask recalls her happy childhood (and Mick again); the windchimes recall the tinkling and whistling sounds of ghosts in the wind.
Themes
Lisa’s simple, not-very-admirable goal is to graduate no later than Jimmy. She attacks her studies with a zeal that surprises her teachers. She soon realizes that hard work can provide a welcome distraction from other things. She even tries to convince Frank to go back and finish with her. Lisa finds English easy but Algebra frustratingly hard. She starts skipping classes, but Jimmy quickly steps in and tutors her until she catches up. He maintains an active social life, taking a “date of the week”—but never Karaoke—to parties, waking up grouchy and hungover the next day.
In going back to school, Lisa learns to direct her energies towards a goal and discovers how much easier this makes her life. This doesn’t negate or deny the pain and trauma she’s suffered, but it does suggest that lashing out indiscriminately doesn’t help anything. In contrast, unable to deal with the loss of his swimming career, Jimmy loses his sense of purpose and begins to engage in the risky behaviors Lisa has recently abandoned.
Themes
One day, when Lisa goes to the mall for cigarettes, she runs into Frank, who invites her to Karaoke’s 16th birthday party at Bib’s house. She asks Jimmy to come along, and he agrees, but he insists he needs to get a present first. Frank and Bib tease each other while Karaoke opens her gifts—mostly alcohol—and everyone gets drunk and high. Around midnight, with Jimmy still absent, a very drunk Karaoke tells Lisa how much Pooch talked about her and how Josh says Lisa reminds her of Mick. Then she mumbles something about beating up Josh one day and stumbles off. Soon afterward, Jimmy comes through the door with a dozen long-stemmed red roses that he drove for hours to find.
Lisa, newly on the road to some sort of equilibrium, wants the same for her brother, so she tries to set him up with Karaoke in an attempt to shake him from his post-swimming funk. Karaoke and Lisa haven’t been close, even though they shared a lot of acquaintances, and Karaoke’s reports show how tied Lisa was—and still is—to her community. And in her drunkenness, Karaoke starts to say something unflattering about Josh, dropping more hints about his problematic role in his family.
Themes
Lisa leaves the party without Jimmy. That night, she dreams about driving into the mountains with Ma-ma-oo for berries. They drive until the trees close in around the truck, and Ma-ma-oo tells Lisa to “find mimayus.” Jimmy doesn’t come home that night or the following morning. By dinnertime, Mom starts to worry, and Lisa borrows Uncle Geordie’s truck to drive up into the mountains. Just after sunset, she finds Jimmy and Karaoke parked by a fire. Jimmy gallantly escorts Karaoke into the car, and they follow Lisa home.
Lisa has thus far struggled to accept the losses of her uncle and grandmother, yet her dream shows how the dead continue to contact and support the living. And calling Jimmy a pain in the ass—the literal translation of “mimayus”—points towards the importance of family; “Mimayus” was the nickname of Ma-ma-oo’s much-loved sister Eunice, too.
Themes
To celebrate the end of the semester, Lisa cooks a celebratory meal of rice, canned fish, and seaweed. Jimmy brings Karaoke over. She and Mom sit in tense silence, unsure what to say to each other. Afterwards, Lisa follows Karaoke onto the porch to smoke. Karaoke reminisces about her childhood, when she and her family lived next door. When Jimmy and Karaoke start making out, Lisa goes back inside. She wonders how Jimmy feels about Karaoke; he certainly shows more interest in her than in any of his other girlfriends.
Lisa reclaims her role in the family by cooking a meal to share with its members—including Karaoke by extension. Despite the discomfort between her and Mom, it’s clear that Jimmy feels very serious about their relationship. Karaoke’s reminiscence suggests that the past doesn’t stay in the past, invoking the historic cycles of abuse and trauma that continue to affect Lisa’s family and friends in the present—even though it’s not yet clear how these cycles have touched Karaoke herself.
Themes
As spring turns into summer, Lisa begins to hanker for fresh crab and halibut. Uncle Geordie helps her fix up the old speedboat, and he frets that the 35-horsepower engine is too powerful for the rickety old boat. But Lisa assures him the motor is fine; it’s been with the boat for years.
Lisa connects with her past through the boat, on which she last fished for halibut with Ma-ma-oo and crab with Mick. The lessons she learned from her beloved family members continue to support her even after their deaths. And Uncle Geordie continues watching out for his grand-niece and trying to keep her out of trouble.
Themes
In the spring, the frogs’ mating songs are so loud they drown out the sound of the local plant. They hide in the tidal grasses where the water laps the shore before sucking back out to sea.
In this section of the book, Lisa’s asides and experiences focus more and more intensely on the water, which lurks as an ever-present and increasingly threatening source of spiritual power, as the waves in this snippet threaten to suck life out to sea.
Themes
In the present, crows land near Lisa on Monkey Beach. They ignore the whispering from the trees. Lisa doesn’t know what time it is, and she’s soaked to the skin. A voice tells her it can help her if she gives them meat.
The crows signify a change of luck or the possibility of a message from the spirit realm, although it’s not clear whether they bring good or ill tidings to Lisa. And she hears the voices of the spirit realm from the trees, promising her what she wants in exchange for a sacrifice.
Themes
B’gwus (sasquatch) isn’t the only bogeyman who populates the Haisla stories; there’s also t’sonoqua, a female ogre who pretends to be a harmless old woman to lure tasty humans close before showing her true form and gobbling them up. Lisa remembers how she was writing about t’sonoqua for her final English essay of the year. The essay prompt asked students to analyze a myth and compare it with a real person. Lisa chose Screwy Ruby. She had only written two of the ten pages on the day that Jimmy started tearing apart his room in a fury; apparently Karaoke had left Kitimaat without telling him. Lisa tried to tease him out of his funk and failed. She tried to provoke him out of it and failed.
The story of t’sonoqua contextualizes the voices from the trees and shows how myths and legends can teach important truths about the world. In this analysis, t’sonoqua represents the alluring but ultimately dangerous ways in which alcohol and partying distracted Lisa from the pain she felt over her losses and traumas. But the legend also offers a warning about the voices that Lisa hears coming from the trees. The spirit realm represents raw power that can be good or evil. Without the necessary training (which Lisa lacks, thanks to attempts to destroy Indigenous cultures), her gift remains too dangerous to use. This t’sonoqua may also insinuate that Karaoke becomes a danger to Jimmy, luring him in with her beauty but ultimately exposing him to danger.
Themes
The narrative shifts to Lisa’s memory of the past summer, after Karaoke left. One night during the Olympics, Lisa finds Frank escorting a dead-drunk Jimmy out of a party. Lisa knows she can’t take him home in his state, so she decides to take him to Monkey Beach for a few days to sober up and get his head on straight. Frank thinks she’s being crazy, but he still helps her haul Jimmy down to the docks and load him into the speedboat. Jimmy is still drunk and disoriented when they arrive; he spends the whole first day huddled catatonically in the boat. In the evening, the mosquitos rouse him from his stupor—Lisa forgot bug spray.
Lisa left the village and ran away to Vancouver and only after this did she gain enough perspective on her life to start to deal with the losses and trauma she had suffered. She tries to do the same for Jimmy, but instead of letting him make his own journey of discovery, she tries to force the issue by kidnapping him and bringing him to Monkey Beach. This further cements the importance of that place as one where she and Jimmy have a shared history and suggests that by going back there to look for Jimmy, she’s really trying to access the past, when Jimmy was with her in the land of the living.
Themes
Lisa offers Jimmy a marshmallow, but he passes out again on the sand. She puts a life jacket beneath his head and covers him with a blanket. She sits on the beach and smokes, looking at the stars and listening to the clams spit. She drifts off to sleep hoping Jimmy will smarten up, and she wakes sometime later to his shouts. In his attempt to start the boat engine, he rips the cord right out. Jimmy throws it at Lisa’s feet and storms off down the beach. Lisa realizes how ridiculous her brilliant, half-baked plan was. She drops the frayed cord into the boat and has some cold coffee to help her think.
Lisa models caring affection for Jimmy as she solicitously nurses him through sobering up on the beach. Thus it comes as a shock when he rejects her attempt to help him—or tries to. Breaking the boat serves to keep him on Monkey Beach long enough for him to sober up and think about his life at least a little bit, accomplishing Lisa’s goals. It seems that the spirit world might be on her side in this escapade.
Themes
Jimmy returns as Lisa is prying the cover off the engine with a butter knife. He hovers over her shoulder while she trims the cord and tries to rethread it. Lisa climbs out of the boat and into the bushes to pee. When she returns, Jimmy asks for food, but all she has is one can of Spam and the remaining marshmallows. She was, she reminds him, only planning to stay for one night, so she didn’t bring much. Finally, Jimmy gets so furious that he orders Lisa into the boat, intent on paddling home. But he’s such a hapless outdoorsman that he starts paddling the wrong way. And in a few minutes, after he exhausts himself, the tide gently pushes the boat back up on Monkey Beach. Lisa warms up the Spam. At first, Jimmy turns up his nose at it, but he’s so hungry that he quickly forgets himself and wolfs it down.
Jimmy’s energetic but fruitless efforts to escape the beach metaphorically suggest his energetic but fruitless attempts to escape dealing with the pain and suffering he feels over the loss of his swimming career—and, by extension, Lisa’s fruitless efforts to escape her own trauma and suffering. This suggests that lashing out indiscriminately doesn’t solve the problem; a person can only claim their own power by dealing with their issues directly. At the end of the day, a person has no choice, really, but to deal with what life gives them, whether that’s a career-ending injury or a disgusting tin of Spam.
Themes
Jimmy and Lisa are startled to hear a twig crack among the trees, which Lisa thinks is likely a bear. She makes noise to scare it off, but Jimmy clamps his hand down over her mouth to silence her. She bites his hand, and he howls with rage and pain. He scowls for a bit but eventually softens and asks her what Vancouver was like. He says that he never understood why she missed Mick—“a nut”—and Ma-ma-oo—“a cold fish”—so much. She replies that he was too young to know them, and anyway, she doesn’t see what he does in Karaoke. This makes Jimmy gush about his girlfriend, her fighting acumen, and her knowledge of astronomy. They lapse into silence again.
If Lisa feels disconnected from her cultural past because she has no one to teach her how to make use of her gift, Jimmy’s focus on swimming kept him even farther from the traditional knowledge and skills of his ancestors. He spent much of his childhood focused on his swimming career and didn’t enjoy the outdoors, while Lisa spent enough time with Mick and Ma-ma-oo to learn to care for herself. And as the siblings sit on Monkey Beach together, they both begin to come to terms with the ever-present reality of suffering and loss in human existence.
Themes
Jimmy tells Lisa that he used to think she was weak for grieving Mick and Ma-ma-oo so intently. But he gave up on life after just injuring his shoulder. He confesses that he was relieved, in a way, since the injury meant he couldn’t mess up everything Mom and Dad had put into his swimming career. At first swimming was fun and he loved it. But at some point, it started to be “about not fucking up,” and he grew scared and stressed. He never told anyone before how he felt. Lisa reminds him that she’s the “queen of fuckups,” and he can’t steal her crown. But he tells her that he thinks she’s doing a good job of dealing with hard things now. He couldn’t even handle Karaoke dumping him.
Both Jimmy and Lisa understand that loss and suffering are inevitable, although neither of them have yet figured out how to deal with this pain productively. They both have experienced denial and have lashed out indiscriminately in ways that haven’t relieved their suffering but intensified it. Yet, the book acknowledges that grieving represents hard and effortful work, work which still may fail to bear fruit—like Jimmy’s truncated swimming career. But the time away and in the spiritually connected place of Monkey Beach allows both Lisa and Jimmy to think about how to do this work.
Themes
On the morning of their second day on the beach, Jimmy and Lisa wake to two sea otters sniffing at their Spam can. Lisa sends Jimmy crab fishing, and he triumphantly nets two for their breakfast. He has no idea how to make a fire, but after Lisa explains the basics, he soon has a village-sized blaze roaring. They skewer the crabs, roast them, and eagerly gobble them up. A little before sunset, Lisa finishes fixing the motor, and although Jimmy wants to leave immediately, she won’t risk the trip home until daylight. Lisa spends the night watching the stars wheel overhead while Jimmy snores. In the sunrise, before Jimmy wakes up, she sees a wolf at the other end of the beach. Later, when they finally push off, Jimmy has descended back into a sour mood and shows no interest in the landmarks Lisa tries to point out to him.
Jimmy makes up for his lack of knowledge with enthusiasm that borders on impetuousness, in contrast to Lisa’s growing concern for preserving her life. The animals on the beach point towards its remoteness—Lisa and Jimmy are alone and isolated by miles and miles of sea channel and impenetrable woods, and no one truly knows who or what lurks there (remember the sasquatches reported to live above the beach). Yet they have each other to watch over and care for.
Themes
A pod of killer whales used to live in the Douglas Channel, until whalers killed them all around the turn of the last century. But sometimes, a few strays will still come up the channel to investigate. On the trip home, Jimmy sees the spout first. A pod of orcas slides past the boat, rocking it slightly. Jimmy kicks off his shoes and dives in. Lisa worries that they’ll kill him, but the whales pay no attention as Jimmy slaps the water and dives again and again to watch them. He doesn’t want to get out of the water, even after they’ve gone.
For many of the Indigenous Nations along the Pacific coast, orcas represent family, protection, and safe travels. The orcas that appear to Jimmy and Lisa on their trip home thus seem to be an auspicious sign, at least in the moment. Jimmy again demonstrates his fearlessness—or foolhardiness—by jumping in the water alongside them.
Themes
In the present, Lisa holds Jimmy in the memory of that moment, where he sat in the boat, teeth chattering as he described the orcas’ slow, deliberate movements, and how they made the water look magical.
In swimming with the whales, Jimmy finally accesses some of the magic that exists in the world all around him, magic to which his sister Lisa has long been sensitive.
Themes
In another flashback, Lisa remembers finding Jimmy boxing up his swimming trophies one day soon after their trip to Monkey Beach. Jimmy says he’s moving on. Dad convinces him to store the trophies in the attic instead of throwing them away. Lisa hopes he’ll move on from his noisy crows next. But Jimmy keeps feeding the crows; he loves the big-brained birds and tells Lisa he’s planning to set up a research center to study them. This is what he wants to do with his life now that his swimming career has ended. Now he looks back on that time as a waste of his life. He claims he’s better off without it; now he’s having fun. Lisa recognizes his mood as denial.
Jimmy doesn’t lash out at the world in the same way that Lisa did, but he also struggles to accept loss. Instead of acknowledging his pain, he buries it in denial, recasting his swimming career as a waste of his time instead of as his sole focus. Now he tries to transfer his attention to a new object—the scientific study of crows. But it’s important to remember that the crows, like many other beings tied to and from the spirit realm, give ambiguous messages.
Themes
Soon afterwards (from Lisa’s vantage point in the present, she knows it’s two weeks before Karaoke’s return), Lisa dreams about a much younger, bruised Ma-ma-oo sitting at the table while Ba-ba-oo sings in the shower. When she hears a crash, she remains motionless, whispering “nothing’s wrong” to herself, even after water starts seeping under the door. When Lisa wakes, she goes on the porch for a smoke. A seal bobs in the water. She finds herself walking down to the beach; something in the water has attracted her attention. When she gets closer, she realizes it’s just a bucket, but she cannot stop herself from going into the water after it. Jimmy tears out of the house after her, alarmed for reasons she can’t understand. She’s just about to grasp the bucket when something grabs her ankle and pulls her under. Jimmy grabs her arm and hauls her out.
Like her dream about Ma-ma-oo’s death, it’s unclear the extent to which this vision represents the truth of events as they occurred or just Lisa’s beliefs about them. In either case, the dream confirms for Lisa the truth of Ba-ba-oo’s alleged abuse. And it shows her that Ma-ma-oo herself struggled to know how to deal with suffering and death; these were lessons she had to learn through painful experience. The dream also points towards Lisa’s ongoing pain and subconscious desire to be reunited with Ma-ma-oo, even if it means her death. The water calls to her in alluring and dangerous ways—much like the t’sonoqua ogre she described in an earlier passage.
Themes
For a while after this incident, Jimmy won’t let Lisa out of his sight. Finally, one night, he tells her that Spotty woke him up that morning, flapping on his window. But summer school finals approach, Lisa starts to cram, and Jimmy begins to leave her alone. And then Karaoke returns. Erica reports the rumors to Lisa; they say that Karaoke went to Vancouver for another boyfriend, drugs, court, an abortion, to join a biker gang, or to become a nude model. One morning, Jimmy wakes Lisa up early to show her the tiny diamond promise ring he’s bought for Karaoke. At breakfast, he asks Mom how much a proper wedding costs. She chokes on her toast, then replies it’s a minimum of $5,000.
Once when they were younger, the little man warned Lisa about danger to Jimmy, and she watched him like a hawk for days. Now their situations swap, and he follows her as closely as she did him—at least until Karaoke returns and distracts him. Jimmy shows protectiveness and demonstrates the mutual love and support a family’s members should provide for each other. It also shows how far he's willing to go to protect the people he loves—including Karaoke, whom he now intends to marry.
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Dad offers to help Jimmy get a job at Alcan, and they busily start figuring how long it will take him to save that amount. Mom mutters that the bigger a wedding is, the faster the divorce happens, while Lisa tries to point out how many grandbabies she’ll get out of it. Mom asks when Lisa will settle down, but she has no answer. She just looks at Jimmy and thinks, “at least one of us is getting a happy ending.”
Jimmy’s new plans look like they will launch him into the next, adult, phase of his life, while Lisa’s focus remains solidly on just finishing high school. It seems, at least in this moment, as if she’s about to become the focus of her parents’ concern again. Yet, her life should have taught her not to trust appearances—things are not always as good (or bad) as they seem. Jimmy’s newfound happiness and sense of purpose may be unwarranted.
Themes
In the present, Lisa has a vision, or a memory, of walking down the steps of the front porch. A large flock of crows sit in the greengage tree, silhouetted against the bright sky. As she approaches, they lift like a dark cloud, blocking out the sunlight, and land on the roof.
This section interposes itself on the narrative flow, in which Lisa toggles between the recent history leading up to Jimmy’s disappearance and the moment in which she’s standing on Monkey Beach. It’s unclear whether it’s a memory or a vision, but given the flock of crows descending on Monkey Beach, it seems like a warning that she needs to be careful.
Themes
On Monkey Beach, Lisa feels paralyzed by the voices calling her name. They lure her to the trees. She knows she should leave, but if something in the trees can help her, she can’t ignore it. She digs her knife—the one Uncle Geordie gave her to help carve up fish—from her bag and the voices fall silent. A crow caws. She walks towards the trees, announcing that while she doesn’t have meat, she does have blood. There is silence.
Lisa prominently described the t’sonoqua in this section of the book, strongly suggesting that the voices she hears from the trees are dangerous at best (malicious at worst). The sound of the crow reminds her of her mission here—to find Jimmy, who loves crows—and also offers her a warning, since the crows often indicate changes of luck. Still, despite these warnings, she presses ahead, intent on finding Jimmy if she can.
Themes
The narrative shifts to Lisa’s memory of finding Jimmy on the porch the morning of her math final. He looks terrible, like Karaoke dumped him again. With hollow eyes, he announces that he’s going fishing as a deckhand on Josh’s boat. Mom is thrilled that he’s getting on the water, making some money, and (although she doesn’t say it outright) getting away from Karaoke. The day before he leaves, Karaoke comes to the house looking for him, and Lisa tells her that he’s in town getting supplies. She thanks Karaoke—they all know that the inexperienced Jimmy must have gotten the job after she put in a good word with her uncle, Josh. But Karaoke seems surprised at the news.
Lisa makes it clear that there’s a connection between Karaoke, Josh, and Jimmy that the family didn’t understand at first—in fact, given Lisa’s earlier hints, it’s clear that her parents still don’t know what she eventually pieces together. Although she hasn’t yet elaborated on the specifics, Jimmy’s grim attitude and Karaoke’s surprise at finding him gone fishing with Josh indicate that it’s not good. Still, it’s clear that Jimmy acts out of his affection and care for Karaoke.
Themes
The day Jimmy leaves, he hugs Lisa and asks her to tell Karaoke that he’ll call later. Josh pulls up in his truck, and Dad loads Jimmy’s gear. As Josh and Jimmy drive away, Jimmy rolls down the window and waves. The crows hop and caw. At school, Lisa gives his message to Karaoke. She shrugs. At lunchtime, Lisa sees Karaoke fighting with another girl in the hallway.
The crows go wild at Jimmy’s departure, strongly implying that nothing good will come of his trip. It’s as if they’re trying to offer him—or maybe Lisa—one final warning before it’s too late. Yet, he looks straight ahead and leaves without so much as a backwards glance.
Themes
Determined to make things right for Jimmy, Lisa decides to show Karaoke the promise ring, to assure her that Jimmy hasn’t abandoned her. In the pocket of his brown leather jacket, she finds an old photograph and a folded-up card. The photo is of a priest and a little boy. On the back it says, “Dear Joshua […] I miss you terribly […] Your friend in Christ, Archibald.” Karaoke has pasted a picture of Josh’s face over the priest’s and her own over the little boy’s. Later, Karaoke tells Lisa she meant it as a joke, that Jimmy wasn’t supposed to find it. The card is a birth announcement, proclaiming “It’s a boy!” on the front. Inside, Karaoke wrote, “Dear, dear Joshua. It was yours so I killed it.”
In her ongoing attempts to support her brother (like a loving family member), Lisa stumbles on the truth: Josh has been molesting Karaoke, evidently for quite some time. When Jimmy thought she’d broken up with him, she’d instead gone to Vancouver to obtain an abortion. And the situation gets even more grim: although the book does not condone or excuse Josh’s actions, it does contextualize them with the revelation that he himself suffered sexual abuse at the hands of residential school staff. The abuses and trauma of one generation continue to reverberate into the next.
Themes
In the present, Lisa makes a shallow cut in her hand. The blood wells up, painlessly at first, but soon the cut burns. She holds her hand up and turns in a slow circle, offering her blood to the trees. She waits. She’s just about to give up and go back to the speedboat when she hears a slithering sound. The final lesson for contacting the dead, she explains in an aside to readers, is to remove yourself from the sound. Push yourself away before your vision dims, ignore the pounding of your heart, the tingling sensations in arms and legs, your desire to lie down and never get up.
Despite the warnings, despite her intuition—combined with her knowledge of Josh’s vile actions and Jimmy’s thirst for revenge—Lisa makes a sacrifice and opens herself up to the power, but also the danger, of the spirit world. She tells readers that the final step in contacting the dead involves submitting to the power of the spirit world completely and without reservations. And then she does so herself, despite previous experiences—like her near-drowning earlier in the summer, after her dream about Ba-ba-oo’s death—which should have warned her of the danger.
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