The Ex rolling into town was the climax of childhood summer in Canada. Games of chance, food stalls, and the steel skeletons of rides and roller coasters would rise up as if by magic in some previously-desolate lot on the edge of town. Real-life responsibilities would melt away like a shadow in the bright lights of the midway, with its looping pop-music soundtrack, the aroma of cotton candy, cigarettes, and a vague air of disrepute. But behind the facades of the rides and games, the midway has a side that most visitors never see. There’s a darkness that sets in after the crowds go home, and it’s time to sweep up the litter and trash left behind. What is life like for the itinerant cast of carnies, dancers, gamblers, and security guards who keep the illusion running, night after night?

It’s the dark underside of the carnival illusion that Brent Mason explores in his debut novel, Midway, out now from Galleon Books. Mason, a well-known folk musician born in tiny Belleisle Creek, N.B., has been a fixture of O’Leary’s Open Mic in uptown Saint John for decades, and won Music New Brunswick and East Coast Music Awards for his songs crystallizing the characters and rhythms of everyday life. Since 2017, Mason’s turned his writing talents to short fiction, with bylines in Riddle Fence, the Nashwaak Review, The Maritime Edit, and the Telegraph-Journal, as well as a 2021 Douglas Kyle Memorial Prize from the Writer’s Federation of New Brunswick for his short story “It Takes a Village.”

Midway is Mason’s most ambitious work of fiction to date, loosely based on the author’s real-life experiences working at fairs from Alberta to Alabama for Conklin Shows, the largest traveling amusement corporation in North America in the 1980s. The novel follows a young dreamer named Wyatt who is reeling from a bad breakup when he decides to ditch grad school, head west, and join the circus.

When Wyatt arrives on the edge of the Red River Exhibition Grounds, it’s possible he’s been on the road a bit too long: he’s starting to believe he has the power to influence passing cars with his mind. But this seems comparatively normal alongside the topsy-turvy world in which Wyatt finds himself. A barroom conversation with carnival manager Jonah—a manipulator in John Lennon glasses—persuades Wyatt that the metaphysical answers he seeks can be found at the fair. He’s immediately put to work on the Milk Can Game, learning the art of reeling in a good “tip” (carny slang for a big crowd around the game), while being reeled in himself to the colourful and dangerous cast of the carnival.

His new coworkers include Des, a palm-reading ex-dancer, and Trish, the belle of the Birthday Game. Then there’s immature, people-pleasing Bruce, whose demons make him a plaything for malicious fat-cat carnival owner BillyB. Petr, a vampiric visual artist, joins the circus after a Toronto exhibition of paintings on the theme of harnessing atomic energy: the carnival, someone explains, is an electric, “physical manifestation of the paintings [Petr] was hanging in his show.” Similarly, for manager Jonah, it’s all a metaphor for life itself (“It’s a microcosm, you know? Everything that’s out there, is in here. How it works, who makes it work, where the money goes […] Name it, it’s here.”) Wyatt finds himself sucked into this world of shared dreams and delusions.

As Wyatt’s long days at the Milk Can Game bleed into long nights of flirting, philosophizing, and fighting, the vibe is akin to Hemingway’s roman à clef The Sun Also Rises: a bunch of hot, hard-partying young people vying for sex and social status as they travel aimlessly in a strange and unfamiliar land—but with less bullfighting and more cocaine. Soon, the facade of the fair starts to break down. As Wyatt creates winners and losers by sheer force of will, he witnesses his friends fall prey to higher-stakes manipulations: drugs, sex, money, and false promises. It’s clear that the seduction of the fair can be dangerous, even deadly, and it’s up to Wyatt to either abandon it, or be consumed.

The strengths of the novel are Mason’s lush, layered prose and insider’s familiarity with the rhythms and lingo of the circus—creating poetry from the way you hammer together a ride, or the carny tricks to influence who wins and loses. The novel’s dark themes are offset by fast-moving scenes, witty dialogue, and well-played literary and pop culture references ranging from W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot to Dire Straits and Sinead O’Connor. With any creative work based on real life, there’s a difficulty in wrestling actual people and situations into the neat confines of a narrative. The result is a story that can feel messy, with certain scenarios and characters seemingly unresolved. Yet it all somehow coalesces within the wild, chaotic world of the carnival. The result is a compelling, harrowing read: where she stops, nobody knows.