Book Review: The Next Rainy Day, by Philip David Alexander

The Next Rainy Day is a meditation on anger and loss, set in small-town Southern Ontario. It primarily concerns two fathers: Bert Commerford, an ex-alcoholic auto mechanic playing catch-up with the ambivalence of reality, and Grant McRae, a reluctant policeman returning to the force after the accidental death of his son.

The book starts primarily from Commerford's first-person perspective; the reader discovers a man who is, for various reasons, sheltered from the changes happening around him - either by intent or ignorance. The town is planning to add a major detour that would cut-off access to his family-owned garage and, to make things worse, his wife has already agreed to the proposed buy-out from the city without his knowledge. His teenaged sons are like Abel and Cain: one is a focused and promising AAA hockey player, while the other is a loutish bruiser who intentionally dangles the blur of Bert's alcoholic past over his head for effect.

As events both tragic and human come to pass, the narrative slowly switches to Grant's story, told in traditional third-person. A husk of a man, unable to fill the empty hole left by his child's passing, his attempt to reintegrate into a new police division becomes a reckoning with the very events which caused his life to change so drastically. His wife has turned to God, and with it her emotional tangibility seems to have disappeared. His newly-assigned partner, Owen Crews - a wonderfully complex character - is a dark horse with a chip on his shoulder, ready to break bones at a moment's notice.

The Next Rainy Day is the first novel by author Philip David Alexander, and as such feels confident; the characters seem real and truly entrenched in their surroundings, the conflicts are natural without feeling imposed. There are also poetic subtleties in the form of Bert Commerford's helpless fascination with daytime talk-shows; what starts as dismissive curiosity becomes a means to redeem himself. There is a respect in Alexander's novel for the life of everyday people: the concerns of making a junior league hockey game, the evaporation of a family business into history. It is in Bert Commerford's perspective that we feel the heart of the book - the inability to make things work, to turn things around no matter how hard we try. Reality is at times a cruel, indifferent stage, but while The Next Rainy Day throws it's punches confidently, it's never done in a misanthropic spirit.

Although there are points in the middle of the book that could stand to be tightened (editorially and otherwise) to keep the narrative moving, The Next Rainy Day earnestly succeeds in telling it's bittersweet tale of redemption.

Available for sale at a fine independent bookstore near you, as well as...Powell's, Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

Published by Dundurn Press (ISBN: 1550025937)