Flicker by Lori Hahnel

Flicker by award-winning author Lori Hahnel is part of the University of Calgary Press’s Brave & Brilliant Series, 2023. It is a genre-crossing construct of mystery, romance, historical fiction, and fiction, with some time travel added to the mix. This multi-layered tale, complex in plot, is seamlessly woven by the author’s ability to solidly string these genres together. The story is narrated by Cass Reisender, who does not know what to think of her psychic abilities, which she discovered as a child when she slipped on the ice while skating with her younger brother. Since that day, her world has been tipped upside down and inside out. Cass is not an eager recipient of her newfound ability and harbours the question: What is a gift if it isn’t one after all?

“My face was hot with anger as I walked down the long cinderblock hallway back to my classroom. How dare Mrs. Lee tell me my dream was a coincidence? That day I began to learn to keep my mouth shut when it came to my inner knowledge. The flickers of future events I saw didn’t seem to happen to other people, and coincidence was an easy way for them to dismiss what they didn’t understand. …
I was careful not to mention my dreams and visions – my flickers- around other kids. Had they known half how weird I really was, it would have been much worse for me.”

Cass encounters evil along with the magic of her abilities. In Calgary, at the Calgary Stampede, in her present time of July 1981, Cass meets Madame Freyja, the travelling fortune teller who will try anything to deter Cass from taking what she feels is rightfully hers. Through the aid of a discovery of an antique device, Cass travels back in time to the Edwardian era, to the year 1900, to West Orange, New Jersey. It is here that Cass finds much in this world that she is sorely lacking in her present world, including the love of a young man, Erik. Cass is faced with a dilemma of the heart that time will not heal, but the desire to travel in time may.

Flicker is told in a tender and melancholic voice, one that is beautifully rich in plot and setting details. Lori Hahnel makes her reader feel as though one is truly walking the streets of Calgary in the 1980s and is also in New Jersey in 1900, discovering the newness of cinema and the early days of musical recordings. I was grabbed by the ability of this author to employ detail and description engagingly and effectively. These parallel worlds Cass finds herself in are definitely at odds and make for a compelling pull from both dimensions.

Flicker is told in a tender and melancholic voice, one that is beautifully rich in plot and setting details … Flicker by Lori Hahnel delivers on all counts.

Flicker is at its essence a tale of belonging. Where and in which time can Cass possibly be allowed to find and truly discover herself? There is much mystery that the reader is fraught with untangling, and the pulls put upon Cass only grow more dire as the story unfolds by Hahnel’s competent hand. I found myself burning through this novel, rooting for Cass to find her heart’s desire. This is a story of discovery; an entertaining experience of multi-genres, invented and real characters, careful plot descriptions, evil scheming, and an exhilarating conclusion. Flicker by Lori Hahnel delivers on all counts.

Lori Hahnel is the award-winning author of Love Minus Zero and Vermin. She writes fiction about love, loss, longing, and the lives of women and is fascinated by outsiders, misfits, the strange, and the forgotten. Lori has taught creative writing at Mount Royal University and the Alexandra Writer’s Centre, and has served as a mentor via the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, the Writer’s Guild of Alberta, and AWCS.

Publisher: University of Calgary Press (September 15, 2023)
Paperback 6″ x 9″ | 252 pages
ISBN: 978-1-77385-468-7

Carrie Stanton

Managing Editor

TMR’s Managing Editor Carrie Stanton has a BA in Political Science from the University of Calgary. She is the author of The Jewel and Beast Bot, and picture books, Emmie and the Fierce Dragon and The Gardener. Carrie loves to write stories that grow wings and transport readers everywhere. She reads and enjoys stories from every genre.