The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor

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When a mysterious young man arrives to stay in the middle of the night, sixteen year old Tiffany does not take much notice. She has her own problems. Her mother recently left her father for another man, her father and her are fighting and she is not doing so well at school. The only good thing in her life is her new boyfriend Tony. Wrapped up in her own world, she fails to notice that the young European, Pierre l’Errant, has some strange habits. For one, he only goes out at night…

Drew Hayden Taylor’s The Night Wanderer is billed as a native Gothic novel and as such held great intrigue for me. I could not wait to get my hands on it when it finally showed its face on the library shelf. Although it was a fast read, it was not an altogether satisfactory one. For one, the characters are never fully developed. I would have liked Pierre to take up more of the story. As a young Ashinabe man who ended up in Europe in the 1600s, his story has the potential to be way more interesting than the self centered musings of a melodramatic sixteen year old girl. Yet Taylor decides to focus most of the story on Tiffany, who, I am sad to say, does not stand up too well to the scrutiny. While Pierre remains in the background, with only scraps of his story thrown occasionally to the reader, Tiffany’s mundane life is given front stage.

Now I am a little conflicted about this, because Tiffany is a typical teenager and Taylor portrays her accurately. She thinks the world revolves around her but is not satisfied with the way it does it. The problem is, she’s boring. She just keeps on whining about everything and not doing anything to help herself. Even in the last scene when Pierre pretty much reveals himself to her, she’s too slow on the uptake to know what is happening. Instead of focussing on the interesting life of a 400 year old Ashinabe vampire, we end up hearing about Tiffany who hasn’t gone anywhere, is reluctant to learn anything and stuffs all her hopes for the future in a boy. It’s like the ‘gothic’ part of the novel was just an afterthought.

Still, there’s some interesting bits to it, although I dearly wish Taylor would have fleshed them out a little. The character of Granny Ruth, Tiffany’s grandmother, could have had more airtime, and the conclusion is begging for a better understanding and knowledge of Pierre’s life. To put it in a nutshell : more Pierre and less Tiffany, please.

tags: night wanderer  drew hayden taylor  

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