Fire Monster by Anita Lahey and Pauline Conley

A defiant, tender comic about coming home again, forgiveness, and trauma.

Fire Monster is such an interesting graphic novel. Did I like it? Hmmm. A tough question to answer. It was mostly so interesting, so genre-bending, so creative in telling its story, that I’m not sure it even mattered if I liked it or even enjoyed it. It was magical in the way a really well-done narrative can be: unexpected and pushes you to your own new levels of creativity and thought. The combined talents of Anita Lahey, who wrote the story, and Pauline Conley, who drew it, culminate in Fire Monster, a defiant, tender comic about coming home again, forgiveness, and trauma.

Main-A-Dieu is a fishing village on the coast of Cape Breton: small, full of the memories of people who went away – and unlike some fishing villages, has a visible scar on its landscape. In 1976, there was a devastating fire in the community. It started on a sweltering day that summer, unusually hot for Cape Breton even now, and ran rampant through the community. In Fire Monster, the fictional version of Main-A-Dieu is haunted by the fire, and so is Clare, a son of the town who’s recently come home from being away working in Fort McMurray. Clare was blamed for the fire, even though he was a child, and ultimately that blame drove him away. But Main-A-Dieu is his home, for all that it’s the site of his anger, his fear, his mistakes, and his trauma. Fire Monster tells the story of how you can come home again.

While I did find the ending somewhat tidily sewn up, almost too much so, what really stood out about this novel was the use of different ways to tell the story through images. Lahey and Conley include songs, newspapers, blogs, and so much more. Particularly striking are the songs, which take the format and style of church hymns – if you’ve ever held a Catholic hymn book, you’ll know exactly the layout, and the use of it in Fire Monster is well-done. The songs are also part of the story, expressly written to tell more of the scene and reveal additional facts about the characters and situations.

Fire Monster is a fascinating way to tell Clare’s story and to share the memories of the 1976 wildfire. I was impressed with the approach and creativity to the storytelling, so much so that the story became secondary to me. It was very well-done, and really made me think about other ways authors and artists could be innovative with their works.

Anita Lahey’s latest books include her 2023 poetry collection While Supplies Last (Véhicule Press) and The Last Goldfish: a True Tale of Friendship, a finalist for the 2021 Ottawa Book Award. Series editor for the Best Canadian Poetry anthology, she’s been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, the CBC Poetry Prize, and several National Magazine Awards for her journalism. She’s also the author of The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture. Anita lives with her family in Ottawa, on unceded Alongonquin, Anishinabek territory.

Pauline Conley recently forayed from an established career as a painter and explainer to “do comics.” Fire Monster is her first graphic novel.

Publisher: Palimpsest Press (May 15 2023)
Language: English
Paperback 9″ x 5.9″ | 220 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-990293-37-5

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.