Count on Me by Ann Cavlovic
Reviewed by Ian Colford
Dysfunctional family dynamics lie at the heart of Ann Cavlovic’s suspenseful, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant debut novel, Count on Me.
Young single-mother Tia Pysar is already dealing with many of the challenges of simply being a responsible adult in the modern world when a medical emergency forces her to confront how vulnerable her aging parents have become. When her mother, Vera, ends up in hospital, Tia is shocked to hear her older brother, Tristan, declare, as if it were an established and well-known fact, that their mother’s main health issue is alcohol. How, she wonders, could I be so out of touch?
“As narrator, Tia tells it like it is, sparing herself and the people around her nothing.”
Cavlovic quickly sketches a portrait of a family rife with division. Tristan, who has recently returned to Kingston with girlfriend Gloria after spending six years incommunicado in Toronto, has always struggled to keep a job. Growing up, brother and sister were often left to support each other since their mother was a narcissistic and emotionally withholding manipulator, while their father maintained a mostly quiet and almost invisible presence in the household. But since Tristan’s return home, relations between brother and sister have been strained.
With both of their parents in frail health, Tristan—with Gloria in tow—moves into the family home. Tia, herself a homeowner facing all of the responsibilities that entails, is also kept busy with a demanding government job, the care needs of one-year-old daughter Zoe, and her own precarious finances. With some trepidation, Tia accepts this new arrangement, pushing aside her doubts and telling herself that Tristan will surely act in their parent’s best interests. But it is not long before Tristan has taken steps to assume full control over their parent’s financial and medical affairs. Without warning, Tia finds herself cut off from her parent’s lives. When she discovers that Tristan has also convinced them to re-write their wills removing her as a beneficiary and stripped her of her power-of-attorney designation, she knows she has no choice but to act.
From this point, we follow Tia as she struggles to understand what has happened and searches for information through consultations with caregivers and lawyers. Gradually, after much strategizing and several unpleasant confrontations with Tristan, she resumes her place as her parent’s daughter, all as their medical problems worsen and ultimately force them from their home and into care facilities.
As narrator, Tia tells it like it is, sparing herself and the people around her nothing. A supremely sympathetic protagonist whose real-life difficulties are convincingly rendered, Tia lacks confidence and is plagued by a crippling case of self-doubt. But the experience of grappling with her brother’s hostility toward her, the source of which continues to elude her to the novel’s end, along with his brazenly self-serving dishonesty, is an education that gives her the strength, once everything is said and done, to move on with her life.
Count on Me is a novel of high family drama, filled with raised voices and cold silences. It depicts in persuasive terms one family’s struggle to find a balance between love and money, a struggle that, as Ann Cavlovic shows us, leaves everyone poorer.
About the Author
Ann Cavlovic lives in Western Quebec where she writes fiction and essays. Her work has appeared in Canadian Architect, CBC First Person, Event, The Fiddlehead, The Globe and Mail, Grain, PRISM international, Room, SubTerrain, the anthology This Place a Stranger (Caitlin Press), Today’s Parent, and elsewhere. Her writing has been listed for various literary prizes and awards, including winning the 2017 Little Bird Writing Contest. Her stage play Emissions: A Climate Comedy won “Best in Fest” at the 2013 Ottawa Fringe festival.
About the Reviewer
Ian Colford was born, raised and educated in Halifax. His reviews and stories have appeared in many print and online publications. He is the author of two collections of short fiction and two novels and is the recipient of the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Evidence.
Book Details
Publisher : Guernica Editions
Publication date : Oct. 1 2025
Language : English
Print length : 200 pages
ISBN-10 : 1771839465
ISBN-13 : 978-1771839464