As 14-year-old Katria watches her father, Ivan, step-by-step sweep his spray of poison brew back to front over the lawn she imagines the little creatures beneath
the fall of his steel-toed boots curling up dead the minute he passes. She imagines his poison percolating through the soil and travelllng underground to his patch of rhubarb stalks that he stewed in pots and forced Moms to eat in large quantities to make her lose weight. Then katria can hardly believe it, the voice she hears coming from her mother's grave: "He poisoned me. Get even."
As 14-year-old Katria watches her father, Ivan, step-by-step sweep his spray of poison brew back to front over the lawn she imagines the little creatures beneath
the fall of his steel-toed boots curling up dead the minute he passes. She imagines his poison percolating through the soil and travelllng underground to his patch of rhubarb stalks that he stewed in pots and forced Moms to eat in large quantities to make her lose weight. Then katria can hardly believe it, the voice she hears coming from her mother's grave: "He poisoned me. Get even."
CHAPTER ONE
Katria never thought about cemeteries or about the dead people lying in boxes six feet under until, on her fourteenth birthday, March 5, 2022, coming home from watching one of those Undead movies with her older sister, Renata, they got delayed by a funeral. They stood at the traffic light eating the rest of their popcorn and watched the hearse and the black flags flap the cars through red to yellow to green like a parade to the cemetery gate.
Renata said, âFirst they drain the blood and then they stuff the mouth with cotton and then they, like, open the windows before they stuff the butthole and then, hello hello, stuff that hole too.â
Katria said, âYeah. Totally.â
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It was the rhubarb growing along the back fence of their fatherâs manicured lawn that got him started on his diet books. If he accidentally stepped on a rhubarb stalk, it didnât bother the rhubarb. It would grow up tall and straight the next day. If he accidentally ran over it with his brand-new Troy-Bilt XP lawnmower, canvas cover included, it didnât bother the rhubarb. The next day it would sprout up again and start to grow again and stand up straight again. He could cut it to pieces with the ax he had sharpened every spring, whether he had used it or not, and the rhubarb would grow back.
His diet books didnât have recipes for turning the stiff, straight stalks into pie or jam or pudding or squares, lots of sugar added, like a normal personâs recipe book. His recipes turned rhubarb into strings of slimy stuff to be served with organic yogurt. His recipes turned rhubarb into a red sauce to spread over organic vegetables. His recipes turned rhubarb into a reddish gravy for lean organic free-range grass-fed meat.
Renata stared down at her plate of Dr. Ivan Boscovâs No-Stroke Healthy Heart Through Rhubarb dinner and said, âIt looks like my period.â
And refused to eat it.
Katria said, âYeah, totally.â
And refused to eat it.
Not so for the people who bought the books. They ate the rhubarb and turned from sick to healthy. They ate the rhubarb and turned from fat to thin. They ate the rhubarb and turned from old to young. But then, oh my gosh, Katria hid the newspaper, March 6, 2022, under her mattress the day it got published, oh my gosh, just when her father was getting ready to go on the road selling his diet book, the Toronto Sun printed a picture of Sarah, his two-hundred-pound wife, Katria and Renataâs two-hundred-pound mother, wolfing down Boston Creams in Tim Hortons.
One week later, Sarah died from a stroke. There was no funeral and no cemetery parade and no hearse and no black flags flapping the cars through red to yellow to green to the cemetery gate.
Katria said, âI donât get it, Renata. Why no funeral? And why wonât our own father, Comrade Ivan, tell his own two daughters where their own mother is buried?â
Before Renata could answer, Comrade Ivan said, âWe will have no more talk of your mother. Sheâs disgraced me.â
He said this as he was ripping up her death certificate. Katria intended to pick those pieces out of the garbage and Scotch tape them back together and hide the proof of death under her mattress. But Comrade Ivan used them like a collage pattern for the front and back covers of his next diet book: Dr. Ivan Boscovâs No-Stroke Healthy Heart: Leaner and Cleaner Through Rhubarb.
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Katria was standing at her bedroom window watching Comrade Ivan spraying his grass with pesticides. While he sprayed, he whistled and hummed a marching tune; she could hear it all the way up to her ears, like he was waving those little black cemetery flags for the little creatures soon to curl up comatose dead under his steel-toed boots.
When he finished spraying, he covered and tucked away his XP Sprayer in his garden shed. Then he unfolded his lawn chair from its hook on the right side behind the door and he sat admiring the flowers growing next to his rhubarb patch. He looked like he was deciding which to pick and wrap in green paper to take to Sarah, who, as far as Katria was concerned, did not die of a stroke on March 13, 2022, a week after Katriaâs fourteenth birthday, but was poisoned.
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âHe poisoned me. Get even.â Well, that sets the tone for this murder/thriller that weaves its way through the lives of a very difficult family of Russian immigrants whose lives are centred around the patriarch who the family all call Comrade Ivan.
At 14 Katria, the youngest, believes she can communicate with her dead mother, Moms, and she firmly believes that her father was responsible for Momsâ death â by poisoning. Ivan uses a strong insecticide to kill all the bugs in his lawn, and Katria is convinced that this poison leached into the rhubarb which Ivan cooks in every possible form â and always gave to his wife in the belief that it would help her lose weight. Katria believes it was a deliberate plot to kill his wife.
From here the story unwinds into a many-stranded tale of intrigue, madness, pretence and wonderful dialogue. Katriaâs older sister Renata is a hairdresser and in her salon she hears stories of the âdog poisonerâ- who she works out is Ivan. Emma, their half-sister has a flower shop â and she knows that her father is also selling himself as a âRodent Removalâ expert â using the same poisons?
The theme of poison intensifies as the story moves along. At dinner Katria announces she will âeat this poison if you tell me what kind of poison you used on my motherâ. Later, the strange Dr Chan explains what Ten-eighty is â a banned substance which is highly toxic and leaves no evidence. And it is found in plants.
As one after another the sisters end up in psychiatric care, they also confuse their doctors with what turns into farce at times, their repartee a mix of madness, or pretend madness and seduction. It reminded me of the sort of warning sometimes carried on TV shows: âThis programme contains humour of a sexual nature.â And the reader is left wondering which one is finally going to do the deed â and poison Ivan and his crazy mother and his sister. One after another they do indeed die â but it is left to Katria to do the final deed. This time though she doesnât resort to poison.
A clever fast-moving murder with lots of twists and turns. I was left wondering whether such a thing as Ten-eighty exists or whether it was purely in the imagination of the author. One hopes so!