Book Review: The Spectacular by Zoe Whittall

By Larissa Page

Content warning: drug use and abuse

The Spectacular opens with a bang. It is 1997 and we meet Missy, a 21-year-old indie punk band member who is attempting to safeguard her future by getting her tubes tied before heading out on tour with her all-male band mates. If they can do whatever they want while on tour (sex, drugs, and rock and roll), why shouldn’t she? Of course, the doctors all believe she is too young to make such a decision and so she goes on tour without the operation. 

Having been abandoned by her mother on a commune that her parents founded, Missy was raised by her grandmother Ruth. Her feelings of abandonment lead her to be who she is when we meet her.

We also meet Missy’s mother Carola, who has been living at a yoga retreat since leaving the commune, and who is caught in the middle of a sex scandal involving the guru she stayed with at the yoga retreat.  

Over the course of the first half of The Spectacular, we watch them both struggle to come to terms with having been without each other—Missy having been left, and Carola the one who did the leaving. We get so many peeks behind the curtain of what it means to be a woman and to be a mother. The book addresses issues of women’s autonomy, reproductive rights, and the immense struggles and expectations of motherhood, especially when it means losing a piece of who you feel you are. 

About halfway through the novel our timeline of 1997 ends, and we are given an excerpt of Ruth, the grandmother who raised Missy. We follow her through childhood to young adulthood and see what it meant to be married to her husband who was unfaithful, and what she needed to do to no longer be tied to him once they immigrated to Canada. While it comprises only a small section of this novel, Ruth’s story is powerful, reflecting the themes of motherhood and female bodily autonomy. With Ruth’s story we also see the power of real love— for family and children, as well as romantic love.  

After Ruth’s story, we are given book two, 2013, which continues to follow Missy and Carola 16 years later, after Ruth has helped to reconnect them. Motherhood once again becomes a strong theme, with Carola attempting to be there for Missy, and Missy trying to determine how she feels about having a baby before it’s too late.  Mental health, motherhood, sexual identity, illness, and connection all take a leading role in the themes of book two .

The Spectacular took me longer than normal to read. I took it slowly and savoured it as I went. I truly enjoyed delving into Missy and Carola’s lives as they dealt with these heavy issues that weighed on my heart. Both they and Ruth were lovable and realistic characters and their stories spoke to issues that are not talked about often enough in our society. My only issue with the novel was Missy’s feelings toward motherhood changing, which I believe is totally acceptable and often what happens—but I think sometimes when young women firmly don’t want to be mothers, that remains to be true for their whole lives and we shouldn’t discount or discredit their feelings or tell them they’ll change their minds.