To Refrain from Embracing

by Jeffrey Luscombe

From the backdrop of an impoverished steel-working community in working-class Hamilton, Ontario, in the 1970s, To Refrain From Embracing follows the trials faced by a small family after suicide-attempt results in 33-year-old veteran Ted being checked into the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital. His wife Gloria struggles with family finances and growing worries related to the well-being of their 10-year-old son Josh while also re-embracing her Indigenous identity through encounters with a local steelworker and remembrances of her mother. Josh, meanwhile, struggles with his nascent sexuality, lack of acceptance from his peers, and fears about his father's mental health, all while entering into a friendship with a troubled neighbourhood teen. To Refrain From Embracing is an immersive, naturalistic, and darkly comedic exploration of a family pushed up against personal and societal precepts of class, race, and sexuality.

Genres: Canada

438 pages, Paperback

Published April 13, 2023

About the author

Jeffrey Luscombe was born and raised in Hamilton, Canada. He holds a BA and MA in English from the University of Toronto and attended The Humber College School for Writers where he was mentored by Nino Ricci and Lauren B. Davis. He has had fiction published in many literary magazines including Zeugma Literary Journal, Filling Station Magazine and Pink Play Magazine. In 2010 Jeffrey was shortlisted for the Prism International Fiction Prize. In 2013 he was shortlisted for the Kerry Schooley Award by the Hamilton Arts Council for his novel Shirts and Skins. He also contributes articles, interviews and reviews to a number of international magazines. Jeffrey lives in Toronto, Canada with his husband.

His critically-acclaimed debut novel, Shirts and Skins, was released 2013. His highly-anticipated new novel, To Refrain From Embracing, was released in 2023.

http://www.jeffreyluscombe.com/
http://www.chelseastationeditions.com...
http://amzn.com/1937627004
http://www.facebook.com/jluscombe
http://www.facebook.com/ShirtsAndSkin...
https://twitter.com/JeffreyLuscombe

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story of a working class family set in 1977 in Canada’s hardscrabble “Steeltown”. Some of The characters in the book are the same as Luscombe’s earlier work, Shirts and Skins, but in my view this is an even stronger work.
Buffetted by personal tragedies, whether from without or self-imposed, the mother of the family, Gloria emerges as the heroine, steadfastly carrying them through the rough hand life has dealt them. Much of the book is also seen through the eyes of a unique and fascinating child who sees far more than anyone else suspects.
If you are interested in family stories, working class struggles and returning to an earlier, but not a simpler, time, I highly recommend this novel.

[Andrew Elfenbein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful, character-driven novel set in Hamilton in the late seventies. Luscombe's representation of Hamilton is so vivid that the city feels as real and as important as the characters. Luscombe has an especially good ear for dialogue: everything the characters say feels genuine. The novel touches on complicated issues of class, sexuality, indigeneity, and mental illness but never feels like a "message" novel. Instead, these all arise in the novel as part of the overall texture of working-class life in east Hamilton.

[Chris Godwaldt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, intricately woven. It’s a tale of an east-end Hamilton family, in a familiar city with a very unfamiliar familial experience.

The characters are wonderfully developed, with the feeling that this family could be the one down the block … real.

Highly recommend.

[Janet Barclay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a realistic portrayal of a man's struggles with mental illness and addiction and their impact on his immediate and extended family.

I loved that it's set in Hamilton, where I've lived for over half my life. Lots of familiar places as well as many that are no more. (I always like looking them up and have learned a lot that way.)

Why not 5 stars? Way too many random commas and other glaring typos!

I also found it odd that the author blended real names with fictional ones, including streets, businesses, institutions and even people from the news. I'd hoped to read an explanation in the after matter, but there wasn't any. It didn't affect the story and probably wouldn't matter if you weren't that familiar with Hamilton, but it seemed weird that Mohawk College was called Iroquois College in the book (the most obvious example).

[Jean-paul Audouy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written with lots of intertwined stories of damaged working class people in the 1970s Hamilton, ON. Made me quite angry at times as many characters seem to deliberately make the wrong choices. All the time. From the day they were born… As though since they come from working class uneducated backgrounds, they had no other choice than follow the rules of their milieu, the rules being drink, smoke, steal money you will lose of horse betting, cheat, hurt yourself as much as you can, and blame it on the capitalists! Sadly, reading Socialist Workers as the only act of rebellion doesn’t change things much, does it?
Still, I couldn’t help but warm to this crowd and wish them well.

[PaperMoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strong multi-character driven plot involving several members of one family - it was brutal in parts and truly shocking at the ending of some chapters. The 1970s setting took me back to my early childhood. A good read but not one to be re-read again in a hurry. 3.5 stars.

[Kathleen Milligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully captures the real life struggles of a working class family. In spite of the sadness, there are some very funny moments.

[Richard Summerbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somewhere in my youth, as I combine-harvested my way through the contents of the Kamloops Public Library, I read a funny novel whose plot turned around a comic author who developed an ambition to be taken seriously in literature and wanted to write a 'grey novel' about ordinary life and its dramas. The comedy turned around the schemes other characters had to put together to convince him to get back to writing comedy and forget this dreary ambition.

In 'To Refrain from Embracing,' Jeffrey Luscombe has shown that one can write about ordinary life in a way that's anything but grey; reality can be as vivid as comedy, especially when it is comedy, but also when it isn't. Luscombe's remarkable inhabitation of the minds of three family members from steel town, Hamilton, Ontario, in the 70s, is replete with the visceral - you'll learn exactly where a sweating woman wipes the sweat off - but also ascends to the delightfully insightful and the well-sharpened ironic. You can FEEL the inherent boy stubbornness of 10-year-old nascently gay Josh as he resists plans to send him to the tawdry sports of Cub camp, as well as the exasperation, resignation and bemusement of his overworked mom, Gloria, as she tries to figure out how to nurture a family where madness is taking its toll. Ted, the dad, who begins the book in (oh, the nostalgia!) a psychiatric institution, has to deal with a variety of interesting self-destructive and self-rescuing impulses, as well as many people's awkward strategies of how to deal with reality when your life will never be glamorous.

I am someone who was raised with a lot of American movies and television shows, and I always made ironic note of how wealthy most of the characters had to be, unless they were starting off broke but talented and their rise to fame was the plot outline. 'To Refrain from Embracing' is like an antidote to that wishful, palliative obsession. Some of the characters in this book do refrain from embracing other characters, but this novel goes all out to embrace real life, and I think that's a great love story.

[Tenno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luscombe's ability to create characters that seem like real people feels like a window into a family uncomfortably familiar to anyone. At times, the author seems to have his characters rolling in the mud more than I'd like, but everyone gets a moment they deserve followed by plenty they probably didn't. For fans of naturalism.
I appreciated how much Luscombe trusts the reader--what was left unsaid was stronger for it. What was said makes readers lean in to see what they might be missing.
I'm left wondering about the title. Most of these characters seem to be victims of a refrain from embracing. But that doesn't seem to be the point at all. Well I like a book that leaves me thinking.

[Amie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great read , but the editing errors were a bit frustrating.