Beneficiary by JoAnn McCaig

Reviewed by Anne Smith-Nochasak

JoAnn McCaig’s novel Beneficiary, explores the world of privilege from the point of view of Seren, who spends a lifetime coming to terms with the lifestyle to which she is beneficiary. In the end, she is coming to terms with life in all its stereotypes, expectations, and paradoxes. The author’s use of time tags makes it easy to follow the threads of past and present in the narrative, and she employs point of view and observation effectively; although we might not agree with the protagonist’s world view, we follow the intensity of her reactions to her life. 

The prologue introduces us to a mature Seren, stopping at the store on the way to her woodland retreat where she plans to gather with her adult children for Thanksgiving. Casually dressed, makeup free, and sporting an unusual dangling earring, her response to the clerk’s lottery prompt “Don’t you want to be a millionaire?” is the unexpected, “I already am.” We immediately want to know more about this mysterious individual.

The author creates a picture of a life, starting in 1991, when Seren is a pregnant single parent with two children and an injured cat, facing major vet expenses and the assorted stresses of single parent life. We flash back to 1969, when sixteen-year-old Seren, daughter of a successful businessman, sees the cost of the affluent lifestyle for her mother. With her flawless hair held in place by Adorn hairspray, her mother perches like a pretty bird at her father’s side. She, like the other wives in the room, falls silent the moment her husband speaks. Seren is reminded of a pony cart scene that caught her attention, showing the girl in frills while “The driver is always the boy.” That, Seren will soon see, is the way society operates. The topic of menstruation is taboo, and the woman does not have a voice. Seren turns from the sweet but predictable high school romance in which she is immersed and seeks the designated “bad boy.” Thus, her quest to find her own life begins.

In 1973, increasingly frustrated with sexual repression and male-female stereotyping, she leaves home for the West Coast to embrace experimentation with acid, hot knives, magic mushrooms, and sexual freedom. Life becomes an endless party; sexual connections are arbitrary and without commitment or depth. Meanwhile, at home, her father abandons her mother, the picture-perfect wife, for a new partner. Seren returns to Calgary to help with her mother, soon moving into communal dwelling and returning to university.

In 1977, she meets TJ on the party circuit, and their casual relationship drifts into marriage. TJ becomes the responsible provider, working on a seismic crew up north, earning money that provides gifts for his struggling family in Ireland. He takes great pleasure in this, but he refuses to spend Christmas with “spoiled rich people “, i.e. Seren’s family. TJ wants the financial success and stability he sees in Seren’s family, while holding their wealth and values in contempt. Her wandering gypsy now wears a dress shirt, attends mass, and disapproves of her swearing. (Similarly, the bad boy of her high school days now weighs 300 pounds and sells real estate in a resort community. One is reminded of the Tenth Annual Woodstock Reunion cartoon, featuring balding ex-hippies in business suits, sporting martini glasses.) Tensions between TJ and Seren increase, augmented by expectations on both sides. 

When TJ moves out, Seren is left with two children to raise, for their father’s participation in their upbringing is not dependable. She has maintained her connection with literature and turns to tutoring university students and eventually teaching at the college. At some point, she has a compulsive relationship with an anchorman, who fathers her third child—a child perhaps in response to her grief after the pregnancy she lost shortly before TJ left her.

Seren comes from wealth, but observes it from the margins, living without its benefits, leaving it to seek a full and independent life. Her sister, meanwhile, follows in their mother’s footsteps, perfect wife to a successful husband, perched attentively at his side for “The driver is always the boy.” Her younger brother is in some ways more like Seren, but with a different outcome. Seren’s struggles might seem real, but after all, she could always access her old life if necessary. That she does not, could be construed as commendable or irresponsible.

When her father leaves her beneficiary to a fortune, she is suddenly thrust into the life of the very rich again. She begins to use her wealth with a sense of awkwardness, a guilt at the entitlement granted her by its existence. Her life begins to resemble the life of her parents with expectations for holidays and for success, with the squabbles and anxieties of those rich or aspiring to be rich. She recognizes that “she has become the beneficiary of a system of economic and social organization that in various modes and different aspects she has avoided, eschewed, despised, and/or ignored.” (110) She struggles to find and live an ordinary life when she feels that she is exposed at all times as a rich girl.

Seren can found charities and support relief efforts. She can volunteer to help refugees, flying business class to Greece and stopping for a week along the way to join her family at a ski resort. She can leave when she wants to, choosing activities that she is physically comfortable doing. She senses the disparity between her lifestyle and that of the refugees and the limited way in which she is supporting them. 

Seren lives in a world that she does not really enjoy, seeing its shortcomings and its paradoxes and finding little in common with her financial peers, but at the same time she remains in it. Life is filled with paradoxes, and Seren must sort through them and come to peace. How she approaches this leads to a very satisfying conclusion.

The author guides the reader, through Seren’s life, to consider “economic and social organization” of the worlds of privilege and poverty, of sexual inequality, of human relationships, of aspirations and goals. All this she does through the filter of her character Seren, pulling us into her thoughts and stimulating us to examine our own views. Beneficiary is a book that draws us back to key passages to reflect on life and values, to ponder the revelations of a very well-told story. 

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About the Author

JoAnn McCaig is the author of The Textbook of The Rose and An Honest Woman. She is the proud owner of Shelf Life Books, an independent bookstore in her hometown of Calgary, AB.

About the Reviewer

Anne M. Smith-Nochasak grew up in rural western
Nova Scotia, where she currently teaches part-time after years in northern
communities. She has self-published four novels with Friesen Press: A Canoer of Shorelines (2021), The Ice Widow (2022), and two books in the
Taggak Journey trilogy: River Faces North
(2024) and River Becomes Shadow (2025). A member of the
Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, Anne enjoys incorporating local settings
into her writing. In her free time, she likes reading, kayaking, gardening,
renovating, and exploring the woods with her golden dog, Shay, while her cat,
Kit Marlowe, oversees the house. Anne can be contacted through her website. https://www.acanoerofshorelines.com/

Book Details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Calgary Press

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 15 2026

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 216 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1773856782

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1773856780