One of the great tropes of any kind of love story is that of opposites attracting, the idea that two people can come from completely different backgrounds, sensibilities, and outlooks and still find common ground in the fertile surrounds of true love.
It’s an intrinsically appealing idea but rarely has it been explored with as much honesty, depth and emotional resonance as in Sarah Henstra’s heartbreakingly wonderful novel, We Contain Multitudes.
With a title drawn poetically from Walt Whitman’s poem, Song of Myself” – the 19th century poet figures heavily in this luminously affecting love story – We Contain Multitudes dives deep into the unlikely idea that opposites might find themselves in the heart and soul of someone entirely removed from themselves and their life experience.
It does so through 16-year-old Walt Whitman devotee Jonathan Hopkirk, who is out, terribly bullied at school by the “butcherboys” and dresses rather quirkily like his poetic hero, and 18-year-old Adam “Kurl” Kurlansky, hero of the school’s football team, brooding object of lust by many of his peers and a guy renowned for the fights he gets continuously into.
You couldn’t pick two more divergent souls and yet when their teacher Ms Khang pairs them up across school years to write letters to each other, part of a great English social experiment if the children of the digital age can effectively and communicatively put pen to paper, the two find themselves drawn together against all odds.
“I mean I see you all in the halls with your faces turning red whenever I catch you staring at me. You’re like these arcade gophers popping in and out of holes. People know who I am because of being a bunch of credits behind and not graduating and having to come crawling back for the so-called victory lap. Or not because of that. More likely because of football I guess. Because they decided to let me keep playing football.” (Kurl to Jonathan, P. 2)
It’s a surprise to both of them although Jonathan, generous of heart and optimistic in outlook, is more inclined to see what might be than Kurl who begins the task grudgingly, sharing as little as possible, wholly expectant it seems that this will be a great big fat waste of time.
That doesn’t stop him, of course, from revealing more and more of himself, as does Jonathan, to the point where they go from writing letters because they have to to writing them because they want to to penning them because nothing else matters as damn much.
Henstra, who structures the book as you might expect as a back-and-forth of ever longer, ever more revelatory and honest letters, takes these two polar opposites, of whom is the king of the school, the other one of its cruelly treated objects of ridicule, and draws them ever closer in ways that feel very true to life and entirely in keeping with what might actually happen when the two people concerned are safe within the relative anonymity of the written word.
They know who each other are in the real world but rarely interact there, save for the few times Kurl rescues Jonathan from yet another viciously taunting attack by his relentless tormentors, and largely content to keep their friendship safe from the many less than wonderful things complicating their flesh-and-blood lives.
But life, and love, rarely stay with cosily set boundaries, and pretty soon, the worlds of Kurl and Jonathan are merging together in ways both metaphorical and literal, aided by the fact that Jonathan’s sister Shayna and her bestie Bron are close friends of Kurl.
There is a gloriously delicious inevitability to it all, suffused by the poetically beautiful words of Walt Whitman who seems able to say what each of the boys cannot at times, or at least in a way that amplifies what they are saying, but this is not a love story without complications.
Lots and lots of complications.
Because unlike most romantic comedies, which dismiss real world issues with a kiss, a few whispered words of fervent desire and a frantic third act dash to the airport, We Contain Multitudes embraces them realising that no love can exist for long, or without any authenticity, without first confronting and dealing with the problems that bedevil to greater or lesser extents.
In the case of Jonathan, who has swirling questions about his long-dead mother, and Kurl, who is harbouring a monstrous secret that he cannot face, they are definitely at the greater extent end of the spectrum, allowing We Contain Multitudes to explore some seriously intense issues that make the unexpected and movingly passionate coming together of Kurl and Jonathan a thing that must be fought for.
But as we all know, life is as rarely straightforward as a romantic comedy and while we want Jonathan and Kurl to find love true love forever after, Henstra makes it clear, in a narrative that grip you fiercely heart and soul, that their nothing foregone about affairs of the heart, no matter how much the architects of rom-coms might want it.
“So I stopped, and I climbed on top of you and pressed my chest to your ravaged back. I tugged the wrists out to each side and pressed my arms along yours, pressed my temple to your cheek, pressed my knees into the backs of your thighs. We lay together like that a long time, until it felt if there was no longer any skin between us, just bones twining like vines around each other’s bones.” (Jonathan to Kurl, P. 201)
We Contain Multitudes is as real and true as the faintheaded, giddy realms of romantic love get.
It is awash in the exquisitely happy wonder of two people falling in love, which Henstra brings vibrantly and compellingly alive with language so lovely it make you sigh with blissful contentment much of the time, but it is also sage enough to know that while this state of being is powerful, it is not invulnerable and must contend with fearsome enemies within and without.
This is what gives We Contain Multitudes so much power and affecting truthfulness.
It doesn’t pretend that love conquers all, straight away or even completely; life is not, much as we wish it, a fairytale and while love can make things infinitely good and better, it doesn’t wave a magic wand and fix everything that ails you.
But, and this is where you will sigh with happiness once again, it has a persuasive power on a fairly transformative scale, and while We Contain Multitudes keeps you guessing and hoping far more than you might want – not because it’s done poorly; it in, in fact, done magnificently well, but because you want true love to triumph and to do it in a way that makes everything better NOW (we are impatient when it comes to love; thankfully Henstra is not) – there is always a lingering sense that what the heart wants the heart will get.
But that is never guaranteed, certainly not in life and not always in We Contain Multitudes and Henstra, writing with empathy, insight and a stunningly good ability to balance love and pain, delivers up a novel that acknowledges this while making it clear love might just have a way of defeating all the very worst of things anyway.