Review | Nathan Whitlock elicits uneasy, tittering laughter and dread amid the mess and ruin of life, making his new book ‘Lump’ something to behold

Snap judgments — they’re the worst, if inescapable. Take me, for example. “Aack!” is my marginal note on page 3 of Nathan Whitlock’s “Lump.” Shades of “Cathy,” I thought, that retro cartoon heroine perennially upset by flat hair and photocopiers on the fritz, neurotic and mundane all the way.

At that point I’d been following Cat’s routine as she returned home. Sure that other women judge her, she’s dismayed about a front hallway strewn with shoes. Surveying kids, husband, sister, and career, she feels worried, bothered, stymied, anxious, fretful, and stalled. The narration relates one of Cat’s epiphanies (“She is fundamentally wrong, lumpy to the core”) and another (“Age has finally found her”), as she anticipates her 39th birthday. What a mess. “Aack!!”

How wrong I was.

By the end of the first chapter, Cat’s problems have intensified; stealthily, Whitlock darkens the comic tone, blends in particles of tragedy. Reflecting on her world, Cat envisions escape: “She wishes she could unzip her skin and take it off. Unzip herself, tits to toes, and let her muscles, organs, everything, fall out into a baggy, bloody pile. Just vomit herself onto the floor and lie there for a few minutes.”

Throughout, the novel elicits uneasy, tittering laughter and dread that grows by the page. With a lightness of touch that compares favourably with Tom Perrotta, Toronto’s Whitlock (“Congratulations on Everything”) proceeds to explore heartbreaking reverberations caused by iffy motivations, rash decisions, and self-interested actions. Literarily, “Lump”’s a captivating performance.

From Cat’s domestic bafflement, Whitlock steadily expands the novel’s scope and introduces a loose network of memorable individuals playing key roles in the “mess and ruin” that follows. They include Donovan, Cat’s handful of a husband, Bianca, Donovan’s former colleague, and Bianca’s social-climbing ex-boyfriend Ravi. Prone to “small acts of transgression,” there’s gummy-chewing Lena, Cat and Donovan’s house-cleaner from the Philippines; she’d nudged into action by her cousin Patricia, who bristles with schemes. And, uniquely self-possessed, there’s Meredith, proprietor of a serene yoga studio. (There’s even one stellar chapter that captures the final minutes of a beloved pet.)

Soon, on an average weekday that turns into domestic hell where Cat ponders the new pattern of dishonesty in her marriage, she’s faced with medical news of two kinds — each condition “growing relentlessly with her,” in Cat’s view.

Whitlock works magic with these characters and their array of circumstances and reasoning. Whitlock’s account of Donovan’s mental acrobats to avoid taking responsibility is a treat to read. And in tracing Cat’s embarkation on a self-healing journey that’s guided by Meredith’s medical philosophy (instead of attacking diseased cells, Meredith advices, “we need to calm them, bring them back into harmony with the rest of our being”), the author is simply masterful.

Whitlock portrays a gallery of disparate individuals brought together by challenging obstacles. Well-meaning or not, their impulses — to do the right thing, say, or grab an opportunity — reveal their limitations, their proneness to shortcuts and short-sightedness. And whether it’s Ravi’s scheme to threaten Donovan or Lena’s hope for blackmail, Whitlock has a knack for comic scenarios that sour. But as plans muddle and outcomes veer far from expectations, a resigned sadness displaces the levity.

As “Lump” closes, Lena sees that “everyone she meets is fundamentally a bad person. The hard part is working out how bad.” That knowledge remains elusive, at least for the characters of Whitlock’s terrific novel.

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