Summary

Part I begins with Chapter 1, “Vincent in the Ocean” (3), set in December 2018. Vincent, one of the novel's protagonists, is tumbling overboard a ship, her camera falling from her hand. Memories from her life return to her, including one in which she wrote the words “Sweep me up” (3) on a window in marker back home in Caiette. She feels she is running out of time. She thinks of her brother, Paul, and then suddenly sees him in her mind, slumped against a doorway, looking “terrible, gaunt and undone” (4).

Chapter 2, “I Always Come to You” (5), is set from 1994-1999. Paul was on the verge of flunking out of his finance program at the University of Toronto and virtually friendless. His prior stints in rehab for heroin made it difficult for him to relate to people and socialize. One night, he went alone to a music...