“All you need is love,” John Lennon famously sang in 1967,  when The Beatles recorded their idealistic peace anthem. While many would intuitively agree, looking at the current state of the world, one might wonder what love actually requires, and, if “it’s easy,” as Lennon claimed, why so many people are still fighting.

Western Quebec author Ann Cavlovic gets to the heart of such matters in her debut novel, Count on Me. Through the eyes of Tia, her conscientious protagonist, readers gain a nuanced view of love’s complexities within a dysfunctional family. Contemplating this family portrait, one might perceive a disquieting microcosm of our wounded world.

Like a sudden storm, Count on Me startles the reader from chapter one, commanding attention throughout. When her elderly mother is admitted to hospital, Tia catches “images of movie stars with gleaming teeth” on a muted TV screen in the waiting area. These are quickly chased by ravaging scenes of Hurricane Sandy, foreshadowing the kind of drama about to unravel in her family and in a world increasingly shaken by extreme weather events. The sharp contrast between shiny celebrities and a house being ripped from its foundations suggests an unsustainable situation in which lies lurk beneath suave surfaces. 

A single mom, Tia is raising a one-year-old while working full-time. She’s already struggling to keep up when she realizes she also needs to protect her ailing parents from her older brother, Tristan. After giving their parents the silent treatment for six years, Tristan is suspiciously interested in caring for them as they approach their final days. Uninvited, he and his girlfriend move into their Kingston home, and, before long, Tia detects shifty financial manoeuvres suggestive of elder abuse. 

Tia also encounters trickery on a larger scale through her job, sparking a secondary environmental theme that adds depth to the main narrative. As a federal auditor tasked with investigating charities, when she is asked to review EarthClean, an environmental organization she sees as “basically a bunch of do-gooders,” she suspects the group has been  unfairly targeted.  Meanwhile, back home, Tristan is as crafty as FairFossilFutures, the dubious group discovered to have triggered the audit. Playing the role of the rescuer son, he blame-shifts to gain the upper hand, and misrepresents Tia as the abuser for innocently pointing out injustices. “There you go. Money, money, money. All you ever care about is counting your money,” he retorts when Tia calls him out for dipping into their parents’ funds.

Tia recognizes both resilience and unresolved trauma in her parents, who lived through the Second World War. Loving her emotionally distant mother is especially complicated by the fact that, growing up, Tia felt unprotected by the one she’s now trying to defend. Recalling her mother’s various abuses, she understands Tristan’s vengeful behaviour, yet she’s determined to break the cycle. Bits of humour provide breathers as Tia makes a serious commitment to healing.“Therapy seemed like a place you went to blame your mother for everything,” she muses, yet later credits her counsellor: “I am the daughter of eastern European parents who lived through a war. I was also raised by a paid therapist.” 

Addressing the wound of emotional neglect, Tia attends to her inner experiences, avoiding the potential knee-jerk reactions of those who feel unseen. She dotes on her daughter, Zoe, without abandoning herself or her parents. “Love is a form of paying attention,” she astutely observes in the final chapter. If this is true, then there’s no lack of it in Cavlovic’s heartfelt, often humorous novel. Count on Me is a close, compassionate study of one courageous woman’s determination to review, and rise above, her conditioning. Pulsating with thoughtful insights, it invites readers to consider how ending negative generational patterns within families might impact our world.mRb