by Lori Hahnel
University of Calgary Press
2023/$34.99/252 PP.
Flicker, by Lori Hahnel, is an odd novel, involving time travel and turn-of-the-century romance, but it starts out with a common backyard accident: Cass hits her head as a child while skating on a homemade hockey rink. After her blunt trauma, Cass settles into a relatively normal life with a few strange visions—until she encounters evil fortune-teller Madame Freyja. Flicker settles comfortably onto the fantasy romance track shortly thereafter and rarely veers off.
As the plot hurtles at a breakneck pace, Hahnel experiments with genre tropes throughout—the mysterious fortune teller, the supernatural-hijinks-inducing bump on the head, romantic escapades with a shockingly unproblematic early 20th-century man—and throws in a few heavy-handed and mostly unresolved side plots, including a brother struggling with addiction on the streets of Calgary. All this, however, doesn’t quite wreck the appeal of the book, which rests in its quirks. The romance is quite spicy. There are notable friendships that are surprisingly resilient and sweet. And there’s even a moment near the end where, walking a tightrope between clever plot twist and tired trope, the reader is left guessing about the book’s entire premise.
The star of the show, strangely, is Calgary itself. Hahnel takes pains to name actual streets and businesses, and this commitment to local detail is a lot of fun. Cass buys an old house in Ramsay, has a fancy date at Teatro, borrows books at the Central Library (but returns them to Memorial Park), and wanders Heritage Park to soothe her turn-of-the-century longings. Overall, Flicker is a perfect travel companion—any train, plane or car journey would be well served by this fast paced, easy-to-read fantasy romance.
Megan Clark is a writer and librarian from Lethbridge.
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