Lily will go through a number of foster homes and names before she turns five. The “abandoned baby” motif is a convenient device for that approach. Y may be (and is) a novel and the central character is always present - but, as is often the case with a first novelist, it is structured to read just as much like a collection of linked short stories. The story of Shannon’s abandonment (actually, the first name she gets in the hospital is Lily and that will change several times before she becomes Shannon) takes up the first 10 pages of Marjorie Celona’s debut novel but, for the reader, it is an accurate harbinger of what is to come. She disappears into the cemetery behind the cathedral. She doesn’t look back, not even once, and the man watches her turn the corner into Quadra Street, her strides fast and light now that her arms are empty. He sees my mother kiss my cheek - a furtive peck like a frightened bird - then walk quickly down the ramp to the entrance, put me in front of the glass doors, and dart away. Now, in the parking lot, he is hidden behind the glare from the rising sun in the passenger-side window of his van. In fact, Vaughn, an instructor waiting for the Y to open, observes the whole episode: Purchased from Indigo.caThe bundled-up newborn who will grow up to be Shannon is left by her mother at the front doors of the Y in Victoria, B.C., in the pre-dawn hours when it is certain she will be found.
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