We Wish You Luck

For a book so obsessed with the importance of finding the exact right word, it’s hard to find one to describe Caroline Zancan’s We Wish You Luck. “Interesting” is a good one; “odd” might be better.

While interesting, We Wish You Luck s t u m b l e s chiefly in its pacing and its weak characters.

The novel is promoted as a revenge plot enacted by students in a low-residency master of fine arts (MFA) program against a glamorous new graduate professor, a young woman who rose to fame after her debut novel became a raging success. But the story is not told by the students at the centre of this revenge plot — it’s told by their classmates.

The first thing that makes We Wish You Luck strange is the way it’s told: through a collective “we.” Every event in the story is one that is pieced together by the students its plot doesn’t revolve around, each incident witnessed or overheard by a fallible narrator who reported it to the collective, or even downright speculated. The effect is that of a story being narrated by a sea, which occasionally offers a tangible wave to break on its shores — stating that a particular exchange was witnessed by this particular member of its collective 14 students, or unkindly describing one of its members, still strangely in “we” as it remarks on a member of itself. This curious way of telling the story sets the characters who drive the plot — the brash and intoxicating Leslie and the kind and gifted Hannah — even more on the outside, and makes their motives and actions something that can only ever be speculated on, never known.

thrilling plot to be had here, rather than a long essay on MFA programs and anecdotes about its cast of characters and lessons. And these c h a r a c t e r s are, largely, only worth telling about in anecdotes. The 14 students narrating this novel only feel real in the sense that they’re mostly caricatures that can be projected onto — which is e x p e c t e d when an author needs to get 14 nobody graduate students onto a page, but still disappointing. It’s obvious which c h a r a c t e r s Zancan spent time developing: Leslie, Hannah, Jimmy (whose death by suicide incites the revenge plot), the beloved Professor Pearl, and, to a lesser extent, Simone — the professor revenge is enacted upon, who is only slightly less caricaturish than her students in that the author gifts her with quirks.

The acts of revenge the book builds toward don’t take place until the third residency term the novel covers, in the final third of the book. We Wish You Luck spends so long laying its groundwork without any urgency or startling bursts of foreshadowing that you begin to forget there is a

Zancan makes the act of distinguishing underdeveloped characters even more difficult by giving them similar names. (Unwise in any piece of fiction, but especially when these names are in the same 17-person graduating class.) Of the 14 members of the “we” narrators, there is both a Penny and Jenny. There is also a Jibs, and a recurring character in a different graduating class named Jiles. We Wish You Luck is rife with J names and L names, leaving a great deal of letters forgotten in favour of making distinguishing between characters as difficult as possible.

As a book for writers, or those whose careers spin around books, the novel is effective; its ruminations on craft and creation, on the precise feeling of reading a truly excellent line or loving a book with all of yourself, are striking. We Wish You Luck is terribly relatable in its descriptions of being a university student, or a writer, but as a novel with a plot perfect for dark academia, a thriller, or even comedy, it falls short on executing that plot effectively. Like many of the students in its graduate program, We Wish You Luck is more promise than excellence.

The Conscious Creative: Practical Ethics for Purposeful Work by Kelly Small is a nonfiction debut novel, releasing in August 2020, that “aims to clarify the complicated business of achieving an ethical practice in the creative industries, or, in other words, becoming a more conscious creative.” After its introduction, the novel is divided into four core components of personal, economic, social, and environmental strategies to develop a rounded, ethical creative practice.

Small’s experience as a former creative director provides valuable insight into the corporate landscape, but it also brings assurance that they understand the difficulties a creative will face navigating the corporate world. After quitting their position because of an ethical mid-life crisis, Small researched how they could develop an ethical, but sustainable, practice in their creative endeavours. They drew inspiration from the practice of ikigai, a Japanese philosophy that equates to “reason to be,” and which poses questions for consideration like “What can you be paid for?” and “What does the world

need?” These are paramount ideas to consider as both a working member of society and a citizen of the world, and they’re concepts that shaped Small’s core values.

The novel’s structure is styled in a way to ensure its accessibility: the passage in which Small lists the four core components for reaching ethical harmony begins with the easiest changes to implement and ends with the more ambitious efforts needed in order to round out the creative’s personal ethics. While the language can teeter on the side of jargon, Small takes pause to define unfamiliar terminology in layman’s terms. Each developmental step receives its own dedicated page that helps the novel to feel more like a reference tool and less like a textbook. It also makes for a quick-paced reading.

The first part, personal enhancement, is structured around the developing self — creating awareness of global issues, developing inclusive language, and challenging our biases are just a few of the subjects the author breaks down. Given that protests are sweeping across the Western world, Small’s passages on privilege, global responsibility, and knowing when to listen raise consideration on the current gap that exists between consumers and corporations when these concepts are disregarded.

For example, corporate, performative activism in order to reflect positively in the public’s eyes is a critical discussion happening on social media against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter. It occurs when companies display black profile pictures, send out copy-andpaste pro-black emails, and post PR statements in solidarity, only to disregard black consumer feedback, hire predominantly white staff, and return to business as usual without implementing any lasting, ethical changes.

While the intended audience for this novel is professional creatives, Small’s thorough breakdown of ethical concerns in the workplace can benefit anyone wanting to grow as an ally in a nation rife with issues of disparity. Small shares anecdotes of their own guilt for their at-times unethical past but offers assurance that conscious development is key. In their concluding mission statement, Small asks their readers “to use our careers and our talents to incrementally improve the world where we can.”