Publication of No Safeguards

No Safeguards

1. Nigel Thomas

Guernica Editions

298 pages

Trade Paperback

ISBN13: 9781550719840

ISBN10: 155071984X

English

$25.00 Canada, $25.00 US

No Safeguards, the first in a trilogy, follows Jay and his brother Paul from childhood to young adulthood. We witness the destructive impact of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on their mother and father, opposition to those beliefs by the boys’ grandmother and each boy’s very different response to their parents’ religiosity. This becomes even more poignant after they leave their grandmother’s comfortable home in St. Vincent to join their mother in Montreal. The revelation that both boys are gay adds to their sense of oppression and divides them from their mother, whose views are shaped by the church and the theology of the Torah.

I catch myself biting the nail of my right thumb, a habit Grama had tried in vain to break. I check my cellphone. Nothing. No message from Paul. I stare at Anna’s outline in the dim light, at her chest rising and falling and quarrelling with the air it’s pulling in and pushing out.

Nigel Thomas’ writing merits serious notice. His understanding of the many histories and their various impacts on literary characters reveals a profound knowledge of the human condition. This novel traces the lives and migrations of a family and their interrelationships, as well as the devastating effects of religious and political intolerance and their destructive residue on human consciousness. A compelling, layered, and persuasive work.

Rawi Hage

Books by H. Nigel Thomas