André Alexis's philosophical novel sheds light on the political machinations of our elected representatives. Review by Sylvie Fitzgerald

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On the eve of the next federal election, it is good medicine to revisit an earlier Conservative epoch in André Alexis' new novel, Asylum. The story is set in Ottawa in the mid-1980s, just after the Conservatives win the largest parliamentary majority in Canadian history. It is a deliciously comic cocktail of a book that transports us to a country led by Brian Mulroney, "the chin that walked like a man," a "self-important martinet" of a leader, but one, at least, with a vision for this country. Alexis' philosophical novel unwinds in the political machinations of our elected representatives, the bureaucrats who really run the country, and the dull grey of life in a government town.

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André Alexis is the author of one previous novel, Childhood, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Giller Prize and won the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Alexis is the creator and host of the CBC Radio 2 Skylarking program and lives in Toronto.

Asylum is narrated by an Ottawa expatriate, a monk living a monastic life in Italy for the last 14 years. Of late, our storyteller has experienced a longing for home, a panic, "like being lost in the woods, anguished at the thought of all [he] might never see again." Asylum is a resurgence of the past, "the last gasp of home."

The genesis of the book lies in the formation of the Fortnightly Club, which began with a disparaging remark about the civil service and evolved into a motley crew of men and women "at home with ideas." A typical conversation could involve "the wilds of Ontario, a debate about wilderness, civilization, men and ferrets." A salon "more practical than metaphysical, because Canadian," its members' trajectories spin a complex web in a story infused with a steeped wisdom.

Here we meet Walter Barnes, a professor of sociology with "a mind so filled with amusing details"‚."‚."‚. it didn't always have room for the big picture." Handsome "in a slightly broken way," Walter's lover, Louise, is a woman "unencumbered by happiness." Her husband Paul is "a man with a smirk: agile but not deep."

Franklin Dupuis, another Fortnightly fellow, is "an intellectual with little patience for intellectuals" who expresses his ideas "with such élan [they] have the power of original thought." Edward Muir, Franklin's foil is "as quiet as a shadow." And Rein Mauer is a man who has given his soul to painting, an artist who knows that "nature"‚."‚."‚. without art, [is] nothing but twigs and violence."

With so many characters and lives to balance, Alexis has orchestrated a masterpiece of "unbuttoned humanity," all "sleepless in the bed of Being" and saved by raw unhappiness by vivid imagination and inspiration, culminating for several of Alexis's players in the construction of a prison. Mackenzie Bowell Federal Penitentiary, a "15th Century vision, all marble and coloured stone," is a political white elephant, an expensive experiment intended to do for prisoners what great art does, enrich the soul.

Weaving personal sagas with the business of state, Asylum is the kind of book that makes you pause and reflect on every page. "So"‚."‚."‚. are you interested in philosophy?" is more than a pick-up line in Alexis' novel where all the weighty questions and none too few of the answers come gift-wrapped in some of the most beautiful prose I've read in years.

While his characters wake with "thoughts to greet the blue-fingered dawn" in a country where poverty is considered "a foreign gentleman," Alexis' readers are invited to consider the notion of "nightlessness," the inadequacy of art, and the stomach-punching truth that "your only inheritance as a man is ignorance." It's just "easier to look on the abyss with your hand in another's."

And what is left for the good man who has failed? "Hope, of course," writes Alexis, "and the knowledge he is a good man."

For me a great novel is one that satisfies three criterions. First, it must be a story told well. It must also be written as if every word has just been handed down from style heaven. And lastly, it must have at its centre a truth that skirts the frayed edges of your own philosophy until it weaves its way into the way you look at the world. André Alexis' Asylum is a great book.

Sylvie Fitzgerald lives in Saint John.