I (Athena) is a wonderful piece of fiction, DyckFehderau’s first novel and a truly captivating work. It is an impressive slow burn in every capacity, asking big questions and telling a story that will not easily leave you. For fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, The Convenience Store Woman and The Rosie Project comes another unforgettable, quirky narrator.


“This novel is impressive in its undertaking.”
When Athena and her siblings have scarlet fever as children in the 1960s, she loses her hearing. She was misdiagnosed as “profoundly retarded” and institutionalized by her father and an old-school, exhausted doctor for the next thirty years. The fact that this book is set in Canada, first Ontario and then Alberta, and things like things happened then, blew me away. Perhaps you too have not thought about what it would have been like to have disabilities or conditions in the 1960s and 70s in Canada and how terrible the conditions were. It sent me on a deep dive into articles and some of the materials DyckFehderau mentions in her author’s note. This book tackles another one of Canada’s shameful histories and a subject that is still not spoken or written about enough even today.
Athena undertakes research of her past, after being shot out into a world she has trouble understanding. With the help of her therapist and her friend and interpreter, Imran, she tries to piece together what happened to her, and why those whose care she was in, made so many huge mistakes.
This novel is impressive in its undertaking and at times heart breaking and then on the next page, making you laugh out loud. Athena occasionally killed me with laughter, “I could not bear to leave Rockwell on the walls. It would be like entering sedation all over again.” Athena is a wonderful narrator, slowing unraveling herself, her truths, through what she can gather and exploring, and what she can remember through her sedation. The prose is uncomplicated and straightforward but stops you in your place. “I am so tired of being watched and not seen.” What does it even mean to be human? Who is seen?
There are so many interesting things explored in this novel, the extreme red tape of our society and the systems within it, the way we make it so difficult for people with disabilities to be their own advocates, the examination of people doing terrible things just because they believe it is right, and even homosexuality as the criminal and mental disease it was seen as in the past. There is a thoughtful and compelling look into Harriet, the head nurse at the institution. When her therapist asks why she gives Harriet grace, she responds, “I would be doing what she did. Reducing a person to something less than she is because I want her to be that.” So many things both shocked me and didn’t.
This is such a well-done book that really got me thinking and am still thinking about days later. Athena sticks to me, and she deserves to stick to you too.
Ruth DyckFehderau has written two nonfiction books with James Bay Cree storytellers: The Sweet Bloods of Eeyou Istchee: Stories of Diabetes and the James Bay Cree (2017) and E Nâtamukh Miyeyimuwin: Residential School Recovery Stories of the James Bay Cree, Vol. 1 (forthcoming 2023). She lives in Edmonton with her partner. She is hearing-impaired. This is her first novel.
- Publisher : NeWest Press (April 1 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1774390671
- ISBN-13 : 978-1774390672
Laurie Burns is an English as additional language teacher to immigrants, literacy volunteer and voracious reader living in Dartmouth.