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Notice
The context is Summer 2017, Vancouver, British Columbia, where economic imperatives are making space less and less accessible to lower-income individuals. The rental crisis is intensifying, ravenous real estate development is thriving and there is a province-wide forest fire emergency, which blankets the city in smoke. The protagonist, Dylan Levett, is a recent university graduate being “renovicted” from his rent-controlled apartment, the central point of view of the story. Notice is a Kafkaesque story about a man caught in the gears of a bureaucracy, a spiral-down, bad-to-worse kind of story. Socially relevant, this is a funhouse mirror held up to Vancouver, a working-class story that stands apart with its composite of literary techniques. Overall, Notice focuses on displacement and petty frustration, applying a documentary sensibility to an original and topical scenario.
256 pages, Paperback
Published April 13, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 30, 2022
Sometimes greed is nothing more than sleaziness…
How did the book make me feel/think?
I’ve spent the last 32 years living in Vancouver. Notice is about a slice of life in Vancouver.
I’m officially worried about millennials. I think the main character, Levett, is a millennial? Are they all so damaged? Worrisome? Dull? Unlikeable?
The story is one of greed. Sometimes, greed is nothing more than sleaziness → Levitt isn’t likeable. Nobody in this story is likeable. I wouldn’t call them entitled. I would just call them flat, like a broken-down cardboard box.
Dustin Cole has a massive vocabulary. His phraseology is sui generis, placing him on par with the superb storytellers of our time. Through Levett, Cole expresses anger and frustration with a world where many millennials are tripping into lethargy. His stunningly painful descriptions of the downtrodden walking amongst us are heart-wrenching. Dustin is a fabulous writer.
BUT
The story bogs down a third of the way in because readers must keep cracking open the dictionary paragraph after paragraph. It becomes tedious. Sometimes a tree just needs to be a tree, and the sky is okay just being the sky.
Blade Girl rolls by—if you’ve spent time in Vancouver, you likely know who she is. Blade Girl is a recurring character, a marker of sorts—but she really marks nothing. Not growth or desperation—she’s just there.
“Notice” is like a graffiti artist painting Vancouver with a dystopian brush. Levett is whiney. He’s a woe is me, individual. Who has focused on darkness instead of light? The story is about being evicted from home because of greed. At the story’s end, I didn’t care whether Levett was evicted or not.
I do, however, know what trine and lambent mean—I’m not sure when I’ll find a chance to use them.
WRITTEN: 30 March 2022
How did the book make me feel/think?
I’ve spent the last 32 years living in Vancouver. Notice is about a slice of life in Vancouver.
I’m officially worried about millennials. I think the main character, Levett, is a millennial? Are they all so damaged? Worrisome? Dull? Unlikeable?
The story is one of greed. Sometimes, greed is nothing more than sleaziness → Levitt isn’t likeable. Nobody in this story is likeable. I wouldn’t call them entitled. I would just call them flat, like a broken-down cardboard box.
Dustin Cole has a massive vocabulary. His phraseology is sui generis, placing him on par with the superb storytellers of our time. Through Levett, Cole expresses anger and frustration with a world where many millennials are tripping into lethargy. His stunningly painful descriptions of the downtrodden walking amongst us are heart-wrenching. Dustin is a fabulous writer.
BUT
The story bogs down a third of the way in because readers must keep cracking open the dictionary paragraph after paragraph. It becomes tedious. Sometimes a tree just needs to be a tree, and the sky is okay just being the sky.
Blade Girl rolls by—if you’ve spent time in Vancouver, you likely know who she is. Blade Girl is a recurring character, a marker of sorts—but she really marks nothing. Not growth or desperation—she’s just there.
“Notice” is like a graffiti artist painting Vancouver with a dystopian brush. Levett is whiney. He’s a woe is me, individual. Who has focused on darkness instead of light? The story is about being evicted from home because of greed. At the story’s end, I didn’t care whether Levett was evicted or not.
I do, however, know what trine and lambent mean—I’m not sure when I’ll find a chance to use them.
WRITTEN: 30 March 2022
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews