Throwback: Hey, Good Luck Out There by Georgia Toews

In Hey, Good Luck Out There, we are introduced to Bobbi, a deeply self-aware twenty-two-year-old who enters rehab after a family intervention: “Addicts don’t talk about the pain, the loss, the moments of deep sorrow that anchor us to the underbelly of society.” The novel is split into two parts: in the first, Bobbi spends thirty days in rehab for alcoholism and substance use, and in the second we see her navigating life while trying to stay sober. There is a particularly dismal moment early in the book when a teacher implicitly assumes Bobbi had help from her famous mother on her creative writing exam. Toews so clearly captures the experience we have as young women of being spoken down to or having our achievements minimized, usually by a male authority figure like a teacher. 

It is easy to sentimentalize suffering by refusing to account for its vast inner destructiveness, or to even sanitize suffering by ignoring the degrading elements associated with it. Toews categorically rejects this approach in her novel; she shows us how misogyny can compound mental illness and addiction. Yet Toews does not write Bobbi out of bitter resignation or nihilism. Instead, Bobbi narrates traumatic events in a nonchalant, almost deadpan way (“he had sex with me while I pretended to be asleep […] everyone acted like I had got what I wanted”). Forgive me for bringing up Freud, but he thought of trauma as a rupturing of the psyche’s defenses. To survive is to relive trauma: “I wasn’t crazy, I just needed to put the part of me that couldn’t quiet somewhere else.” Bobbi’s inner monologue is enraged; her outer persona is confused. It is almost as if she has doubled, split into two people: the one who was multiply sexually assaulted, and the one who passively watches from a distance. She refers to her journal as “the monster I had left at the bottom of my bag.” This is where she pours her vitriol, the things she would never say in real life, “a way to expel adrenaline after every fresh new hellish experience.” While there is much heaviness to this novel, there are also many moments of levity. Toews is particularly adept at capturing the voices of the women in the program with Bobbi (as well as the cast of characters she encounters in the city after leaving rehab). For instance, there is Tammy, “mean and sarcastic and hilarious,” who describes rehab as “a concentration camp.” Later, after Bobbi learns her grandmother has died, Tammy offers: “Or maybe she was thinking about you and was thrilled she didn’t have to put up with anymore of your shit,” causing Bobbi to burst out laughing.  

In the second half of the novel, Bobbi must scramble to find a job and an apartment in Toronto without any support from her family. Her internal monologue remains cutting, one that she externalizes as a terrifying creature, black and shiny: “It felt like the words were coming from outside me.” She meets Agatha (who wears a lanyard listing all her allergies around her neck) in the line for a viewing of a basement apartment but ultimately ends up in a hostel. Often Toews offers insights and feelings that are like looking in a mirror, so much so that it’s hard to pick just one observation: “I found myself staring at women much more than men. I was always fascinated by how they functioned, how they passed as normal girls.”  Overall, Hey, Good Luck Out There should be placed alongside contemporary classics like Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kayson, Heart Berries by Terese Marie Milhot, The Blindfold by Siri Hustvedt, and The Last Asylum by Barbara Taylor—where the lines between trauma and treatment are blurred (“I had to feel nothing, this was my biggest takeaway from rehab”). 

Alex Platt

Alex Platt is a lifelong reader living in Brampton with her two cats. She holds a BA in gender and women's studies from York University.