A novel in couplets, Kingdom of the Clock follows twenty-four hours in the intersecting lives of an extensive cast of characters. The titular Kingdom, implied to be modern-day British Columbia, arguably serves as protagonist, and Cowper perceptively captures BC’s precarious mosaic of tech bros, salmon fishers, underpaid baristas, unhoused people, and aspiring artists, as well as the devastating effects of the opioid crisis. 

A yearling bear wanders into the city; an artist steals phones to pay her rent; a crow becomes trapped in a train car; two swimmers drag a seal’s body out for a sea burial. In a landscape where animals and humans struggle to survive, this atmospheric novel asks us to interrogate what we regard as natural.

(Cowper’s writing is gorgeously attuned to sonic flow and sensory detail: “Gulls tick / on dark winds” while “[c]hill air breathes on the water’s single eye.” The propulsion of the plot is likewise a strength. On nearly every page, characters reckon with life, death, friendship, morality, addiction, and paying the rent. At times, however, I questioned whether every storyline was fully necessary to the project. Meghan, a woman with psychosis, seemed to be granted less complexity than other characters. In contrast, Mehrdad’s storyline – and his family’s – was especially layered, moving, and productively ambiguous. An elderly man who once domestically assaulted his wife, Mehrdad now seeks to support his family while his daughter-in-law gives birth to a baby who may not survive. Cowper crafts this sensitive subject matter with nuance and compassion, leading to a climax that is gasp-inducingly beautiful. 

Neither condemning nor absolving its characters, this musical, dense text captures the clink and fizz of modern life. Exploring the paradoxes of human behaviour, Cowper’s book flows with the insistence of rain, sometimes rushing up against the reader with the startling closeness of a passing owl’s wing. mRb