Memoir about growing up in a mixed race family in rural Ontario, with a heavy focus on substance abuse, child neglect (the three siblings were left on their own for months at a time) and very unhelpful institutions. It should have been really, really bleak, but God do I love Caetano's writing.

The prose is a mix of slang, made up words, nicknames, verbing nouns, poetry and a very good ear for patterns of speech, a combination nails the feeling of being a child then young man trying to make shapes out of the chaos around him. It also at times feels like Watership Down levels of learning vocabulary for things, in that you pick them up once, then they continue in use and gain context as they go, and stick with you after. The sun is the Heartbeat, the buckle is a loss of control, Canada and its government are called Little Miss Dominion (which is the most perfect thing I've read in my entire life), and so on.

We're again in the longer work as short stories format (which is really making me wonder about our educational institutions), which I guess works in the episodic nature of a childhood, but I do sometimes long for structure.