Rather than exploit its seven-foot-two-inch tall narrator as a kind of grotesque spectacle, Kristen den Hartog’s new novel uses the character’s unusual physique as a way of illuminating the world from an extraordinary perspective. Ruth Brennan’s height permits her a kind of bird’s-eye-view of humanity that the more earth bound around her don’t suspect her capable of.

Ruth casts her mind back to her childhood and the medical condition that caused her extraordinary stature. Her physical enormity is paired with a special gift: she has the ability to see back in time, at one point entering the mind of her mother, Elspeth, as she’s waiting to give birth. An English war bride in a small Canadian town, Elspeth is still traumatized by the suffering she underwent during the Second World War, and anxious that motherhood will make her vulnerable to further heartache. She is distant from her husband, James, who diligently follows his mail route every day, unaware of his wife’s angst.

The couple is simultaneously bound together in their desire to protect their beloved daughter and pushed apart by their struggles to deal with her condition. James insists that Ruth needs medical help, while Elspeth won’t acknowledge there is a problem (even though she has to lengthen her own dresses to provide Ruth with clothing for elementary school). At the same time her parents’ marriage reaches a crisis point, Ruth finds her first friend in a girl her mother knows will prove dangerous.

Den Hartog provides a vivid depiction of what it means to inhabit a gigantic body. Ruth is so heavy that her knees are damaged, and if she falls, she’s unable to pull herself up again. She is slow and clumsy in a world she has grown too large for. And yet, Ruth’s outsized stature is also the source of her power: she towers over her narrative in much the same way a child towers over a dollhouse. She is above the events she describes, but also able to see the whole picture at a glance.