Grief and Distraction: Lesser Ruins Captures Modern Loss

 In Opinion

“Anyway, I think, she’s dead, and though I loved her, I now have both the time and freedom to write my essay on Montaigne . . .” With these startling words, Mark Haber launches his tragicomic third novel, Lesser Ruins. It’s a story of a widowed professor who immerses himself in an endless academic project, apparently more concerned with footnotes than grief.

Yet as the novel unfolds, what at first appears callous turns out to be a defence mechanism. The narrator makes avoidance an art form, embracing distraction to avoid his grief. He can’t stand to go near his wife’s closet, which still smells of her, so he avoids it. Happy memories of their life together lead to despair, so he casts them aside. The structure of Lesser Ruins mirrors this evasion, each digression a way to avoid confronting grief.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Haber balances heavy emotional themes with genuine humour. The passage about an espresso machine exploding under the narrator’s desk is raucously funny. The constant calls from his son, Marcel, a DJ with a tendency toward lengthy monologues on electronic dance music, are also hilarious.

The narrator’s book on Montaigne, the French Renaissance scholar and inventor of the essay, never materializes. He spends years obsessing over the project but produces only hundreds of potential titles and notes on tangential topics. His excuse is that he requires a “mental Sahara” of uninterrupted focus. But he’s betrayed by his eagerness to respond to distractions. Each hankering for coffee or ping from his phone becomes another escape from the task at hand – and from the grief that lurks behind it.

Even when the narrator secures his coveted “mental Sahara” at an artist’s colony, he swiftly manufactures a fresh diversion: fixating on the absurd 30-minute checkout limit for Montaigne’s diary. The perfect conditions reveal that distraction isn’t something that happens to him – it’s something he creates. This becomes even clearer through his encounters with his neighbour Kleist, a Holocaust survivor and sculptor who represents everything he isn’t. Unlike our narrator, she transforms her trauma into art, creating sculptures that confront past horrors. But her tragic end raises the question of whether this method of handling grief is more effective than our narrator’s constant distraction.

Lesser Ruins transforms mundane modern habits – checking our phones, pursuing the perfect cup of coffee – into something comic and profound.

These aren’t just distractions. They’re survival mechanisms in a world where grief competes with push notifications for our attention. The narrator’s inability to write his Montaigne book becomes less about writer’s block and more about the fundamental nature of modern loss.

The fragmentary structure of Lesser Ruins won’t suit everyone. Some may find its three-paragraph format and constant digressions challenging, but that’s what makes this book special. By immersing us in the narrator’s scattered consciousness, Haber achieves something rare: a novel that captures both our current cultural condition and the timeless struggle to face mortality. It’s an impressive achievement that, unlike its narrator’s diversions, demands and rewards our complete attention.

Chris Greer is the co-owner of Nottawa Cottage Bookstore. He grew up in Creemore and has a degree in English from the University of Toronto.

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