Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that – though I argue that you have to start by judging it by something – but And the Walls Came Down, Denise Da Costa’s debut novel, has a blurb from Zalika Reid-Benta, who wrote the brilliant Frying Plantains. Very promising. Additional copy promoting the novel compares it to Catherine Hernandez’s work, set in low-income neighbourhoods in Toronto. Well, this was all more than enough to pull me in.
“Da Costa knocked it out of the park with this debut.”
And the Walls Came Down is set in the Don Mount Court neighbourhood (now Riverdowne) in the mid- to late-1990s, a coming-of-age story in a difficult home. As an adult, Delia returns to the apartment she grew up in, to retrieve her childhood diary. Left there under mysterious circumstances, Delia retrieves it from a housing complex in the process of being torn down. Seeing the only place she ever considered home being torn down and having her hands on her childhood diary, Delia begins to revisit her childhood, looking at the events with a new lens and a better understanding of how the destabilizing events in her younger years actually played out, rather than how she thought of them at the time.
The result is a sparky, bright, blunt, and straight-shooting bildungsroman. Delia is the perfect combination of naïve kid, dreamy writer, and practical realist about her life. She holds onto the idea that her father will come back to them, even after they move to Don Mount. She has concrete plans on how to avoid her mother’s strict orders, and she takes charge of her little sister, Melissa. The diary entries heading the different chapters are perfectly adolescent in tone, while her memories of the events from those time periods tell the story, but also lift a window on her adult understanding of what was really going on in her life: an absent father, a mother who was abusive and ultimately suffering from untreated mental health troubles, a bubbly younger sister, and a future that felt like it wasn’t possible for the way her life was turning out.
Da Costa knocked it out of the park with this debut, a challenging and endearing novel, leaving you with hope after a steady decline throughout the novel. She paints a rich and realistic picture of a small, close-knit neighbourhood, the difficulty of falling in love for the first time, the instability of being a teenager, and the way we let our dreams shape us. Da Costa passes no judgment on Delia, simply holding up her story – a funny contrast to Delia herself, who could often be very judgmental, in the way kids who think they have the world figured out can be. And the Walls Came Down is an excellent new novel, and I very much look forward to hearing more from Da Costa.
Denise Da Costa is an author and visual artist. Born in Toronto, she spent her early years in Jamaica. She is a graduate of York University and Seneca College School of Communication Arts, and is an alumni of the Humber Creative Writing program. Her work explores the complications of love and the impact of class, gender, and race on identity. And the Walls Came Down is her first novel. She lives in St. Catharines, Ontario.
- Publisher : Dundurn Press (June 6 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 344 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1459750365
- ISBN-13 : 978-1459750364
