Some novels are made of light and air. Others are made of earth and water. But earth and water are light compared to the density of In the Place of Last Things. Each page, paragraph, even sentence presses down with neptunian gravity, a density that becomes curiously physical (yes, the book is remarkably heavy). That makes reading the novel a daunting project. It’s like wading through molasses. That’s just what it felt like. Those individual sentences were often so rich in meaning and metaphor that they each seemed to be demanding to be savoured, which rather slows the pace of the prose and of the plot.

At times a meandering road novel, at other times a meditation on the impossibility of true communion, Helm seems uncertain whether he wants to write a noir thriller or an academic love story. Russ Littlebury, the principal of the tale, is a burly Saskatchewan farm boy who is the muscle on the local hockey team but also, apparently, a natural talent with latin and greek. His once hell raising father, Mike, is a born again Christian whose fundamental goodness grates on Russ. In Mike’s last cancerous year, Russ finds himself in Toronto teaching the foundations of western thought in a college, finding love and conflicts of principle, before shedding his academic and amorous skin to head home and see Mike through his final days. Yes, and after that it becomes a road novel as Russ and his “aunt”, Jean, and an orphan whom Mike has fostered, Skidder, head south to Tucson. Along that route they pick up a possibly pregnant teen named Lea who charges Russ with the improbable task of finding her absconded lover, Jack Marks, somewhere on the Mexican border and delivering to him a letter in which she sets out her plight. That’s when things switch into noirish mode. Any one of these stories might have made a rich and thought-provoking novel. Compacting them into the space provided, presumably by exhuming all the air and light, has resulted in a fragrant, undoubtedly bio-rich, mulch.

Michael Helm is clearly well-versed and capable. He can write a sentence with heft. I just wish he’d let his story breathe a bit. Regrettably not recommended. ( )