The novel combines graphic sexual content with mystical religious themes in an experimental style.
The novel was poorly received at the time of publications, as it sold poorly and was panned by critics, which may have helped trigger Leonard Cohen's transition from writing to music. However, the novel has since been vindicated, as it is considered part of the Canadian literary canon and Canada's first postmodernist novel.
This work contains the following tropes:
- Age-Gap Romance: The narrator marries 16-year-old Edith when he was in his thirties. While it's not explicitly called out by the story, the age difference reflects the narrator's pedophillic tendencies and helps explain how little he understands her (to the point that he has no idea why she killed herself).
- Ambiguously Jewish: The narrator. F. discusses forming him into the "New Jew", but he's not given any other Jewish features.
- The Chessmaster: F. is a master of political schemes and manipulation, and implies that he arranged major aspects of the narrator's life, such as his relationship with Edith.
- Childhood Friend Romance: F. and the narrator grew up together and have a sexual and deep emotional relationship that lasts for their entire lives.
- Conveniently an Orphan: Every major character in the book (F., the narrator, Edith, and Katherine Tekakwitha) is an orphan, conveniently limiting the cast of characters.
- Emasculated Cuckold: The narrator, whose wife was sleeping with his best friend F. This fits in with the books themes of winners and losers in society; the narrator identifies with the losers, while F., an aspiring Übermensch with Nazi-leanings and lots of political power, represents the winners, and he encourages the narrator to do so as well.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: While 17th century priests start to worry once Katherine Tekawitha's mortification rituals start to endanger her life, they're very casual about it in general, and seem perfectly ok with acts of self-violence (such as whipping her back until it bleeds, every single day) that the 20th century narrator finds horrifying.
- Depraved Bisexual:
- F., who sleeps with anyone, is a Mad Bomber and terrorist with vague Nazi allegiances who manipulates everyone around him.
- One of F.'s goals seems to be to manipulate the narrator (who is also bisexual) into embracing perversity and depravity. He seems to have succeeded by the end, as the narrator has become a Dirty Old Man who preys on neighborhood children.
- Driven to Suicide: Early on in the book, Edith kills herself by hiding in the elevator shaft so she would be crushed by it. Her motivations why are never explored.
- Dying Race: There are only thirteen remaining members of the A. tribe that the narrator studies.
- Epistolary Novel: The second part of the book is in the form of a letter written by F. to the narrator of the first part.
- History Repeats: F. says that the British did to the French what the French did to the Indians back in the 1600s, creating a cycle of oppression and cultural dissociation.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: The book juxtaposes the constant, kinky sex going on in the 1960s plot with the extreme self-mortification of the 17th century, setting them in opposition to each other. The virginal Katherine Tekakwitha who engages in the most violence against herself, and at one point her friend Marie-Therese, a widow, is able to regain her virginity after extensive self-mortification. However, F. queers this binary, as his goal seems to be to introduce both more sex and more violence into the world.
- Love Triangle: A weird case. The narrator is sleeping with F. while married to his wife Edith, but F. is also secretly sleeping with Edith. It's the sort of situation that should lead to a Marry Them All situation, but never does in the book.
- Madonna-Whore Complex: There are many parallels between Katherine Tekakwitha and Edith (both native, both die at the same age, both fascinate the narrator in a sexual way). However, Katherine Tekakwitha's virginity and purity is her most defining feature, while Edith is defined solely by her sexual experiences and sexualized descriptions of her body. The narrator can't seem to decide whether he wants a Madonna or a whore; he talks about wanting to fuck a saint and seems in love with Katherine Tekakwitha, but also thinks of Edith as innocent even though she clearly isn't.
- The Matchmaker: Katherine Tekakwitha's aunts are determined to set her up with someone, to the point of attempting to trick her into marrying a young man.
- Pædo Hunt: The end of the book involves the police simultaneously searching for the escaped terrorist leader F., and for the narrator, who is a pedophile on the run.
- Posthumous Character: Edith kills herself at the beginning of the book, and everything about her is told through flashbacks.
- Rape as Backstory: Edith was gang-raped as a 13-year-old. How this affected her is never really explored, but it may have had something to do with her hypersexuality and eventual suicide.
- Treehouse of Fun: Darkly subverted. In the last section of the book, the narrator is an old man living in a treehouse, which is cold in the winter and symbolic of his loneliness. He uses the tree house setup to lure in children who he molests.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The novel flips back and forth between two distinct story threads, and often abruptly shifts from one to the other.
