The Scent Keeper

The Scent Keeper is a bildungsroman, a first-person narrative that traces the difficult and often painful journey of a sensitive central character from childhood to adulthood. Most often that journey is defined as a movement from naiveté and generous trust to a harder-edged perception of the world more in line with the reality of things, a perception that is darker and more complicated than a child could understand.

For Emmeline, that journey is keyed to three different locales. First there is the quiet, remote island where she lives for more than a decade with her father in a kind of innocent fairy tale world, protected from the outside world, where she is entirely devoted to a father she sees as ideal and perfect, indeed her love for her father is uncomplicated and untested. After her father’s death, which confuses her and leave her with unfounded feelings of guilt, she is taken to the harbor town of Secret Cove where she is introduced to the real-time world—the bullies in her school, for instance; her own ignorance of basic things in the world from cars to computers; and ultimately her first confusing experience of love, the radical movement out of the self and the need for another. And finally there is the city, Vancouver, a sprawling and confusing city where her education is completed. In Vancouver, she learns finally the reality of her parents’ marriage and more pointedly the complicated villainy of both her father and her mother; she responds to the complicated pull of her heart for the misfit Fisher; and she understands that trust comes only from honesty, a revelation in marked contrast to her fairy tale world on her father’s island.

The novel, as a coming-of-age novel, is compelled by Emmeline’s own hunger to understand, to learn—suggested not only by her commitment to the informal classes her father conducts during their time on the island but as well later by her tireless pursuit of Google searches in her efforts to find out who were father and mother are and when she gets to Vancouver her search through more than 40 nurseries trying to find Fisher. As with many principal characters in other coming-of-age novels, Emmeline is determined to find out who she is—suggested by when halfway through the novel Emmeline finds out from her mother that Emmeline is not even her name.

As with any bildungsroman, the ending leaves open the question of the principal character’s next move. The novel resists any tidy happy ending. It is enough that the character is gifted with awareness. Her parents, whom she has learned are hardly perfect fairy tale characters but are rather flawed and imperfect people, have taught her that memories can “come from dark places but they can create beauty all the same” (310), an astute observation that suggests how her maturation into adulthood has been completed.

In her first days of school in Secret Cove, Emmeline has already been subjected to the casual mockery and cruel insults of new classmates who do not bother to get to know her: “I heard the whispers running up and down the aisles of the classroom like gritty sand through my fingers. Saw the grins” (100). Even though the school year is just beginning, Emmeline has already learned a lot.

And then,“ the red-haired boy appeared” (101). In a novel in which the central character transitions into adulthood to a world defined by narcissism, ignorance, and greed, the moment when Emmeline first meets Fisher stands out as something special: “His eyes were astonishingly green. Like trees in the spring” (101). The combination of first love and love at first sight is a convention of fairy tales that, although dismissed as fantasy by those stubbornly bound to the real world, promises a happily-ever-after ending.

On the surface, the relationship between Emmeline and Fisher makes no sense—they are from different worlds, have different ambitions, and have different perceptions of people—except to them. That certainty compels Fisher to be deeply wounded when he senses that Emmeline is holding back, refusing to share her secrets. That certainty also compels Emmeline to head to the city to spend what little resources she has to find the young man who has so deeply stirred her heart. In the bar scene when her mother reveals the malevolence and bitterness in her heart, Fisher’s presence trumps such unhappiness.

First love is an experience that Emmeline’s evolution into maturity cannot destroy. Her reunion with Fisher, their commitment to each other, and their parenting a daughter all affirms Emmeline’s fragile faith in the logic of her heart. The experience of first love symbolizes the hope and optimism of the closing chapters.