Eddy Boudel Tan’s third novel is a haunting and intricately woven story of loss, identity, and the secrets families keep. The Tiger and the Cosmonaut is as thrilling as it is tender, making it a book that’s painful to put down.

At the centre is Casper Han, who returns to his family home in Wilhelm, a small town on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, after his father goes missing. He’s travelling with his white, actor boyfriend, whose life has been untouched by the casual and overt slights that Casper’s Asian-Canadian family has long endured.

Casper tries to explain a past that he himself doesn’t understand. Why did his mother and father come to this remote part of Canada, leaving family in China and Brunei? And why didn’t his father try harder to find Casper’s twin, who went missing when he was nine? This part stops you in your tracks. To lose a sibling is awful. But a twin, a genetic copy of you, someone you shared a womb with and every birthday—that is something else. And definitely something you’d tell your long-term partner…

“I don’t understand,” he says with care, “why you feel the need to keep things from me.”

Should I confess that I haven’t a clue either?

“Don’t you trust me?” The troubled look on his face deepens around his eyes and lips, but he’s softer now. The last thing I need is Anthony blaming himself for my inadequacies. Guilt scratches the inside of my skull.

“It’s got nothing to do with trust.” I could tell him everything and accept the flood it’d create, or I could allow in just enough to keep the soil from going dry. A little truth can be healing, whereas the whole truth could drown us.

The careful dance between revelation and concealment that Boudel Tan creates propels both the narrative tension and the novel’s emotional depth.

When they find his father in the forest behind their house, Casper knows instinctively it’s connected to Sam, the lost twin. But it’s also possible that his father, the one holding most of the family secrets, is starting to lose his mind to dementia. This creates a ticking clock that ups the tension ante as the anniversary of Sam’s disappearance on Whistler’s Night, a Halloween-esque, Wilhelm tradition, comes back around.

Just as Wilhelm’s residents conceal themselves behind costumes for the festival, Boudel Tan’s characters hide their truths, fears and regrets behind figurative masks. Casper’s journey is about unmasking: confronting long-held, shame-filled secrets, revealing vulnerabilities and learning to see others—and himself—without pretense.

As Casper and his siblings struggle to find a common ground, and his mother continues to be obtusely secretive, the truth seems to be slipping away. When Casper reunites with an old flame, he’s surprised by the feelings that resurface, but also by the memories it dislodges and their possible connection to Sam.

Family dynamics, old romances and buried memories collide as Casper struggles to break free of his role as the “good son” to confront the secrets that have defined his life.

This novel may be centred around the tragic and mysterious disappearance of a nine-year-old, but what Boudel Tan does, seemingly effortlessly, is draw us into an intricate web of family dynamics, deadly, small-town politics, and how the past doesn’t let you go if you don’t face it. He lets us into the mind of Casper with such openness that when you get to the end, you might not see the final twist coming.

Eddy Boudel novels After Elias and The Rebellious Tide have been finalists for the Edmund White Award, the ReLit Best Novel Award, and the Ferro-Grumley Award. He was named a Rising Star by Writers’ Trust of Canada in 2021. His short stories can be found in Joyland, Yolk, and various literary journals and anthologies.

Boudel Tan appears in Camouflage and Connection: A Conversation with Writers of Fiction on Nov. 1. Tickets go on sale Sept. 10. 

Review is by Dee Raffo. Originally from the UK, Raffo is a screenwriter who lives in Whistler, Canada. After being named as a finalist in the 2022 Women in Film and Television Vancouver International Screenwriters Competition, her script, Mountain Rescue, secured her a place in the season one writer’s room of the hit CTV drama series, Sullivan’s Crossing. The same script secured her a place in the inaugural The Writers Lab Canada, 2024. She is currently working on developing a historical drama series with Darius Films. Dee is part history geek, part adventure sports enthusiast. When she’s not scribbling away, you’ll find her in the mountains, hiking, biking and skiing.