How Far We Go and How Fast

Jolene, 16 and named after the Dolly Parton song, is living in her brother’s old room in the basement of her mother’s house. Jo is overwhelmed with depression and has been since her older brother, Matt, left then disappeared. Matt had been her caregiver, protector, friend, as well as her musical collaborator. Without him, she is lost and struggling to cope as she tries to find the will to leave. Maggie, her divorced mother who is struggling with her own bad decisions, is incapable of helping Jo cope. Her father, aptly, runs a demolition business. Music becomes Jo’s life blood and locating her brother’s lost blues guitar, an obsession.

Although Jo successfully isolated herself, claiming only her dog Howl as a friend and confidante, as the novel progresses the reader is introduced to a colourful cast of characters who unwittingly make connections with the angry girl. These individuals add colour and grace to Jo’s unremitting grey landscape. The tough and unconventional teacher pushes Jo to face her loss and to go to school. The artist, Ivy, invites Jo into her world of mosh pits, art, and parties. The pawnbroker, Earl, gruffly allows her to play the guitars in his shop and provides her with estimates on how far she can travel on hypothetical pawned TVs and other electronic gadgets. Even Jo’s mother, broken and grieving herself, offers her solace and a place to land.

Jo’s Winnipeg is not the Winnipeg that I love. This is Winnipeg mid-winter; harsh and unremittingly, dangerously cold. Although clearly recognizable, Jo’s Winnipeg is as bleak as her emotional state. Jo states:

Most of what they say about Winnipeg is true. It’s cold and flat. When it’s not cold it’s flooding or burning down in an act of arson, or someone is being knifed in a back lane as a swarm of mosquitoes feast on the flesh of victim and assailant alike. But it always persist in being profoundly, devastatingly flat.

The novel follows Jo through her personal floods and swarms of mosquitoes and also her sunsets and golden moments. In the end, she may learn Winnipeg is not quite as flat or as cold as she thought.

Decter’s vivid and evocative word choice defines the character of the novel. Winnipeg’s frigid and unfriendly winter is the lens through which Jo interprets her reality. As Jo explains:

Usually winter is quiet, what with the sun going down by four, but this year it’s so dead you can’t even imagine. But try. Imagine air so cold bare skin freezes in less than sixty seconds. Imagine a horror movie where the entire city you live in is trying to kill you. Everyone stays locked up tight in their homes, afraid to go outside. That’s what this winter has been like.

In fact, Decter deftly uses weather and the seasons to create mood as well as an instrument to advance the plot.

Jo is a girl on the cusp of falling, afraid of facing the unmentionable. She is stuck in that moment of panic “that stretches out longer than gravity should allow”. The terrible beauty of How Far We Go and How Fast is that she finally does fall. And there is life after the fall.