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Kameleon Man
by Kim Barry Brunhuber
Guy Babineau

There's nothing I like better than a book with good bone 
structure. Kim Barry Brunhuber, an Ottawa television 
journalist and documentary filmmaker, was a fashion 
model for 10 years. His first novel is a coming-of-age story 
about a mixed race (white/black), heterosexual (very), 21-
year-old (again, very) catwalk hopeful from the suburban 
bedroom community of Nepean who heads for Toronto, 
eight-by-10 glossies in hand and a big chip on his shoulder, 
to forge a career. Will he become the next international 
supermodel for Kameleon Jeans? Does a black guy stand a 
chance? 

Oh puh-leeez, I thought, not more fiction about how 
shallow fashion is. Lee Tulloch's 1989 fashion-insider 
satire, Fabulous Nobodies, and Bret Easton Ellis's 1999 
club-kid kill fest, Glamorama, are examples of several 
contemporary-ish novels that struck a sure pose, wobbled 
on stilettos of ha-ha irony and moral superiority, then fell 
flat. Like them, Kameleon Man suffers from a surfeit of 
forced ironic humour but then veers off the runway in an 
intriguing direction. It's not really about fashion at all. 
Its theme is one our country holds close to its heart: the 
search for identity and inclusion. This is particularly 
poignant for someone of colour living in an image-
obsessed, white-run world that confuses racial equality with 
the packaging of ethnicity as a marketing commodity, then 
expects members of ethnic group A, B, or C to reflect that 
packaging. To succeed, those who do not look or behave 
like the majority often adapt to the status quo by mimicking 
the surroundings. What you see isn't necessarily what you 
get. 

Like many promising first novels, Kameleon Man has 
awkward moments. Brunhuber frequently delivers dazzling 
passages of tight, lean, poetic prose, but he sometimes 
deploys these as decoys for emotional catharsis, thereby 
dissing his own narrative and dismantling the reader's 
connection. Too many characters come and go too quickly 
to be developed. These are superficial structural problems 
easily remedied with practice and exercise. I look forward 
to more books by Brunhuber because he's got what only 
nature can give: talent and a unique perspective.

Originally published in The Georgia Straight

© Guy Babineau 2003-2004

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