Book review: On the Up by UBC MFA tackles blood-thirsty Vancouver real-estate market

On the Up, is a novel with critical commentary about Vancouver, which reveals the blood-thirsty nature of Vancouver’s real-estate market by following the lives of Jasminder, Mark and Carl; strangers who become involved in a lucrative, but deadly property development project.

This is UBC MFA alumni Shilo Jones’ first novel and it makes for a riveting read as his staccato prose gives the novel a frenetic and crackling energy. He skillfully uses prose to convey his characters’ inner turmoil by coupling his truncated sentences with streams of consciousness; reminiscent of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s depiction of Rodion Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment… if Raskolnikov had orgies with hipsters and carried around a potbelly pig named Holdout.

At times, Jones’ writing style creates a dissonance between the reader and his protagonists — especially at the height of his protagonists’ emotional distress. While this dissonance could be a deliberate ploy by Jones to reflect his characters’ isolation, readers may find it difficult to immerse themselves within the novel.

On the Up is also refreshing because his protagonists retain a sense of realism. Unlike other novels, Jones’ protagonists are not paragons or walking parables, but flawed human beings. They are complex individuals susceptible to their base emotions which is demonstrated by characters experiencing different forms of loss; thus making them more relatable to readers suffering from the human condition.

Overall, Jones weaves a startling tale full of broken and morally bankrupt characters to reflect Vancouver’s unseemly underbelly.