Tempting Faith DiNapoli by Lisa Gabriele, Doubleday Canada, 291 pages, $29.95

This is a coming-of-age debut novel about a devout young lady named Faith who (mostly) inadvertently breaks all ten Commandments before the tender age of 19. Author Lisa Gabriele, in writing Tempting Faith DiNapoli, intentionally smacks around the Four Commandments of CanLit. Let us now give praise for each and every one of these glorious transgressions:

I. Thou shall not be funny
There is a complaint, articulated often and loudly among many whippersnapper writers, that fast and funny CanLit is by definition impossible. We export comedians to the United States by the metric tonne, but our fiction is at best ironic, never laugh-out-loud humourous.

Thankfully, Faith's mother Nancy is a comic wonder, a character equal in wit and weight to Pauline Mole, Adrian Mole's mum, from the popular diaries by Sue Townsend. Weary and wise, she is perfect foil for Faith and her three siblings:

"For chrissakes, Matt, you went and knocked up Trel, you stupid ass!" she said.

Trelly stomped. "Mrs. DiNapoli! Jeez! You don't gotta put it that way."

I stifled a giggle, and my mother laughed the laugh of a person who didn't get her own joke.

"How the hell do yous two think you're going to do this?" she asked.

Matt motioned to Trelly like she was the main act, and he was just the warm-up band.

To balance the funny is difficult. It requires emotional resonance, otherwise all that remains is a thin paste of cheap laughs without much purpose. Humour must develop character or be in service of narrative, as demonstrated above.

II. Thou shall not lust
When 16-year-old Faith first has sex, it is real adolescent sex -- that is to say, sticky, awkward and painful. No florid metaphors, no elliptical explorations of touch and taste: "But this sex was all squeaky friction, like my insides were lined with a skinny, dry balloon and I was giving reverse birth to a rubber baby doll's arm. We were having nothing like the sex I'd seen on soap operas, where the lovers slide into bed, then fold around each other with such ease and joy, making a happy tent out of their white satin sheets."

Faith faces passion, responsibility, desire and its consequences, muddling through like the rest of us -- aware but not always in control of her teenage lust: "Out in the county, you were either nice or you were a whore. Unlike in the city, here there were few places to disappear into. How you behaved between fourteen and eighteen determined the rest of your life, especially if you stayed in town."

III. Thou shall not worship the graven images of popular culture
The high priests of CanLit believe pop culture is shallow, ephemeral and trite, devoid of authenticity and depth. But remove all those years we spent watching television and movies, listening to Top-40 radio and what's left? To ignore pop culture is to make an enormous segment of the book-buying public disappear.

That said, few authors seem to understand how to overcome the trap of pop culture superficiality. Pop is often treated as a shortcut to setting scenes, moods and eras and many authors confuse nostalgia for insight. In the same way that a DJ can always pack the dance floor at a retro 80s night by playing "Tainted Love," an author is guaranteed an easy laugh when mentioning feathered hair, Gremlins and Jordache jeans. The more difficult task is making these trinkets essential artifacts, not archeological curiosities. Here, Faith describes how her brother converts the near pristine Comet inherited from his grandfather into something uniquely his: "Sour man-smell in the back seat, duct tape holding up the rearview mirror, Led Zeppelin stickers on the bumper, work shirts and hockey equipment littering the trunk, and the ends of Matty's joints stuffing the ashtray."

The appropriate use of pop culture is the difference between decorating a set and building a home. Gabriele understands this distinction. When she writes about a local drug dealer named Scott Demeter, the details are what distinguishes great fiction from good: "He and Serena's older brother both sold pot, but Scott decorated his plastic bags with band logos and sayings such as 'Die young, leave a beautiful corpse' and 'Here's to the road less traveled,' all carefully spelled with Wite-Out."

IV. Thou shall not make reading pleasurable
The unspoken assumption is that if you're enjoying a book written by a Canadian author, something must be wrong. Guilt seeps in. To paraphrase Henry Ford, "You can have any kind of CanLit you want, as long as it's Ondaatje, Shields or (God rest his soul) Findley." To ask for something else is to feel unpatriotic.

The prose of Tempting Faith DiNapoli does not flow with the timid viscosity of Bee Hive Golden Corn Syrup; instead it is light, quick, deft. If this were not sin enough, Gabriele is poignant where she should be ponderous: "But then came talk about 'The Recession.' It was The Recession this and The Recession that and I had started to think of the recession as a white smoky hand, like from the movie The Ten Commandments, which crept down from heaven and killed firstborns."

* * *

If there are also five deadly sins of CanLit, and there well might be, I feel confident Gabriele has committed them too. To find fault with this novel is possible, but hardly worth the effort. Some will find the foreshadowing heavy or the italicized excerpts from Nancy's diary too direct or too familiar a device. And at certain moments, especially early in the novel, the prepubescent Faith flirts too often with precociousness. But none of this seriously detracts from the work.

Obviously I don't believe Old Testament CanLit serves the needs of its readership equally well. Nor is this topic being debated in a meaningful manner. In the last five years, younger authors have had less of a struggle getting agents and publishers and real-fancy-nice-shiny book deals, but they still aren't getting much respect (or generating respectable sales figures). I feel the best way to challenge the old guard to out-write them, not out-whine them. Tempting Faith DiNapoli represents a thin shaft of light, poking through the gray clouds, illuminating a promising new literary path.

Thank God.