The Flying Troutmans is a quest novel in which the narrator, dysfunctional Hattie, takes her dysfunctional niece Thebes, and dysfunctional nephew Logan, on a journey in a van across America in a bid to find their dysfunctional father Cherkis, because their dysfunctional mother Min, has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
That’s a lot of dysfunction.
Actually it’s not.
And anyway, what modern family is not dysfunctional in one way or another? Despite the purple hair and addiction to fashioning over-sized cheques, Thebes is just a little girl. Despite the moods and a penchant for carving poetic phrases into dashboards, Logan is just a teenage boy. Their affection for each other and for their ill mother is charming and heartwarming.
Although it has the structure of a quest story, The Flying Troutmans is really a story about running away. Hattie returns from France (the place she ran away to because Min’s world scared her), because of a plea from Thebes for help. With Min in hospital wishing she was dead, Hattie realises with great shock that she now has Min’s two children to look after. Rather than face this, she bundles them into the family’s van and sets off to find the father that left them years ago and hasn’t contacted them since so that she can leave them with him.
As the structure of the quest novel dictates, they find their treasure in the end, having met a few other wacky people and a dog along the way, and then everything’s sort of all right. And that’s where my problem with the book lies. It’s a very nice read – witty, lively, full of intriguing characters – but the end is just too, well, too convenient, too forgiving.
Toews hints at characters with complex personalities but I didn’t feel they quite emerged – I’d have liked everyone to be angrier, darker and much more disturbed, and for there to be an almighty bust-up at the end. It’s as if Hattie, Thebes and Logan have been travelling in a vehicle that’s been creaking and groaning under the pressure, threatening that it might not reach its destination, that it might even kill them all on the way, and then when it finally arrives where X marks the spot, rather than exploding in a ball of fire, it just runs out of petrol. In short, it’s a bit of an anti-climax.
Having said all that, it is an enjoyable read which shows us that just because a family unit doesn’t fit the 2.4 kids ideal, it can still be a family that works. If you want a comparison, it’s a bit like Little Miss Sunshine but with more sunshine. It’s just that I prefer thunder and lightning.