By Meredith Grace Thompson
Content warning: drug use
In her latest novel Francie’s Got a Gun, Carrie Snyder demonstrates her narrative skill through a non-linear plot that circles, rotates, runs around, and hops between the narrow points of view of those orbiting the titular Francie, a young girl—with a gun. Francie is running, running, breathing, singing, but always running. The rhythm of this book is fast and yet syncopated. It flits between the differing narrative perspective of Francie’s mother, father, grandmother, baby brother, best friend, best friend’s sister, choir instructor, and more to create a rounded outline of how and why and when Francie got a gun. The gun is what matters. The gun is the story.
Snyder uses clipped sentences and quick shifts to make the reader never feel quite at home in this intricately built-up world of one small, struggling family with the broken door and the car that is never where it should be when it should be and the father you can never quite lock down. Capturing the frantic interior life of childhood and its dependency on deeply intertwining friendships of climbing trees and make believe, Snyder’s world is breathtaking. It is a difficult place to live in for too long, as the reader runs and runs with Francie, and just like her, never really understands why or how. We just know that we can’t stop. Mustn’t stop. Falling ever more ahead of itself, Snyder’s structure nestles within it prose which morphs effortlessly into the lived reality of each character, whether it be Mikey’s changing fast food order depending on who is calling him and if he wants to pretend he is better than he is (and then immediately regretting his choice of chicken wrap and diet pop over the fries he really wanted), or grandmother Irene’s harsh awareness of her own inability to stop talking or to keep from pretending that everything is just fine when it so thoroughly is not.
Snyder is a deft writer of fiction. Her movements are effortless. She manages to wrangle a nonlinear plot with notable astuteness. Her plot runs backwards and forwards, this way and that, from one minute point of view to the next until finally, with the relief of understanding and letting go, a full picture is formed. Until finally, heartachingly, we understand why Francie has a gun.
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.