Margaret Laurence's Diviners

The Diviners / Margaret Laurence
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, c1974.
382 p.

I put off reading this book for years, thinking it was going to be a dull, good-for-you classic. I'm not sure why, as I absolutely loved Laurence's novel The Stone Angel when I read it years ago. In any case, I couldn't have been more wrong about this one.

This a story that feels fresh and modern in the way that it plays with structure and form. It asks questions concerning a woman's independence and her role as wife, mother, person. I found Laurence's method of telling the story through sections separated out as memories, inside memories, writings and so forth really fascinating. The story shifts in time like a person talking, retelling their life in back and forth fragments. Yet it's completely coherent and builds narrative tension.

Morag Gunn is from the small town of Manawaka; orphaned at age four, she is raised by the town refuse collector and his wife. Her main goal is to get out of town as soon as possible. She succeeds in leaving to go to university, and through a circuitous route, including a relatively brief marriage, ends up with one daughter and a house in the Ontario countryside, from whence she tells her story.

And she tells it, full of sensory details and clever writing, as suits the writer Morag has become. She compares moments from all over her life and reflects on her prickly nature, including being totally honest about what she's done right and wrong over the years. She's a strong, complex, completely real character with a thoroughly active internal life.

This is a Canadian classic that has the whiff of the 70s about it, in its focus on a woman's life and her struggle for individuation, and in the elements of identity, both personal and national, that arise again and again. But it's also modern and relevant and just really, really interesting to read now.

Highly recommend this one.

Ellen in Pieces & The Opening Sky

And now for a quick review of a duo of novels that I didn't quite love as much as others have -- even if both of their covers are gorgeous. Both feature strong women at midlife and the messiness of mother-child dynamics, friendships, lust/love and much more.



Ellen in Pieces / Caroline Adderson
Toronto: HarperCollins, c2014.
304 p.

Ellen McGinty is the mother of two grown daughters, and is at the point in her life where she is ready to do whatever she wants. This story takes a brash, opinionated, mature woman who has no more f*ks left to give, and follows her through her relationships - with her children, her father, her new young lover, her long-standing female friends - until she receives a grim diagnosis. You don't often see this kind of woman in fiction, and I appreciated Adderson's skill at character development. The exposure of the faults & fissures of adult friendships was another strong point. I also really loved her style and her writing itself.

However, I didn't really warm to Ellen and while I thought this was a clever and fresh novel, I also felt a bit distanced from it. It feels a little like a novel in stories, which isn't always my own favourite style, and so my final sense of it was that I liked it but I probably won't read it again. Unlike other readers, such as Kerry Clare, who rave about it very eloquently. You'll have to judge for yourself! 


(ps - I really loved Adderson's earlier novel, The Sky is Falling, much more)
 
The Opening Sky / Joan Thomas
Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, c2014.
368 p.

This is a beautiful cover for a book with a premise that promised much. But it really didn't work for me; a little too long, and a little too uneventful.

It's set in Winnipeg, in a fairly privileged family; a self-satisfied middle-aged couple with the usual middle-aged marriage complaints, a daughter full of promise & just beginning her life as a university student...and her unexpected pregnancy.

This throws the family into turmoil both because it is rather shameful for her therapist father & Sex Ed Resource Centre manager mother, and because Sylvie & her boyfriend are both eco-warriors who had planned never to reproduce. 

There are lots of questions to ponder in this book, but the lecture-y feel of some of the ecological themes was a bit distracting, as was the frequent insertion of the meaning of words/ideas etc. that the characters are thinking about. Also, the parents of both Sylvie & her boyfriend are unbearably smug despite the secrets and history they have together. (It's those secrets from the past that were the most interesting part of the story). So while objectively this is an intriguing idea for a book, it was just not the one for me. 

The Break

The Break / Katherena Vermette
Toronto: Anansi, c2016.
350 p.

I saw this book mentioned by some of the bloggers I know who always steer me in the right direction -- Buried in Print, Pickle Me This -- so I knew I had to find a copy.

It's a beautiful and harrowing read. Vermette writes of North End Winnipeg, of a large family of Metis women whose lives are affected by violence over and over again, as a systemic reality. But who are also people first, not victims, not just another statistic.

It's a nail-biting story, a mystery to be solved, at the same time that it is also a literary novel of family, history, belonging. It begins with a family tree, which is useful at the start since it's really a large tangle of female relatives at the heart of the book. But once you get reading the voices begin to separate themselves a bit more, and become recognizable.

As the book opens, we hear from many different characters; Stella who has moved to the other side of The Break -- an open field that stretches north to the edge of the city, and represents a division from the North End neighbourhood she grew up in; her cousins Lou, Cheryl and Paulina; her Kookum (grandma); niece Emily (victim of the crime at the centre of the book); her deceased mother, and more. There are a lot of narrators, and some of the cousins melded together for me, all seeming quite similar. But the effect of a chorus telling the story of the shades and facets of a female aboriginal experience in Winnipeg is strong; there are only a few men in the story, the focus is on women's lives. 

Including elements like gang culture, gender-based violence, drug and alcohol use, and abandonment, it's gritty, at times almost unbearably sad, and relentless in its expose of casual, everyday, continual racism affecting all aspects of the characters' lives. But it is a read that is necessary in this era. About 3/4 of the way through I started seeing what was coming, and was cringing from it -- Vermette doesn't hold back, and it's a hard conclusion to see. But it doesn't seem that 'justice' will be served, or will help in the end; it's the support of the women in this extended family, and their revisited cultural healing practices, that will help them through this crisis.

It's a dark story, perhaps a little long -- I felt that some of it could have been slightly streamlined -- but beautifully written with great compassion and great honesty. This family is made up of survivors, of women who, in the end, refuse to be seen only as victims. 

Aleta Day

Aleta Day / Francis Marion Beynon
London: Virago, 1988, c1919
266 p.

I've finally read this piece of classic Canadiana, and am amazed by how current it feels, in some ways at least.

I like the slower pace of older novels, and decided to take a break from the glut of new and forthcoming books that I've been gorging on to read something close to a century old.

Aleta Day is a journalist, and a woman who has the courage of her convictions. She's a suffragette and a socialist, and works to support herself. She has an equal with whom there seems to be a one-sided affection (on his part) but poor Aleta gets knocked sideways by her attraction to another journalist, McNair, a large, blustery traditionalist with a young son. She has to reconcile her beliefs with her strong love for him and his son. It adds a strength to the story and to her character; she doesn't simply capitulate weakly like other heroines of the era in the face of sex appeal (I'm thinking of you, Verena Tarrant) Instead, she struggles with how to compromise and allow both strong feelings to co-exist. She doesn't give up herself for him.

Now unfortunately, the era and the thrust of the story don't seem to allow for a happy ending, but Aleta tries. She stays true to herself despite any barriers thrown up in her path. And she is a straight-talking, no-nonsense, determined woman who is also at the same time a woman who has the capacity for deep friendship, love, and nuturing.

And she doesn't put up with McNair's nonsense - when he starts drinking, she ticks him off about it and lays down her boundaries clearly. She knows what she will and won't accept. I just wish the author could have seen her way to creating a setting in which Aleta is allowed the compromise, is allowed to live happily ever after as a strong and independent woman. And I wish that for heroines created today as well. This novel, from 1919, speaks strongly to the same concerns that many of us have today: women's roles in business and journalism, gender-based social expectations and prejudices, and personal power in the face of men who suck up all the oxygen in the room. It's surprising to see both the changes and the lack of change side by side in Aleta's era and our own.

This book was a fascinating, solid read, but as another reviewer said, it's just on this side of greatness. It could have been much more, but I am still so glad I read it just as it is.

Finishing off with some great quotes from this novel:

"For one person to act as the proprietor of another is a crime. It is a local expression of all the intolerable tyranny in the world."

"There is no cause but a bad one which thrives on the suppression of argument."

"As I see it, tyranny wears many wigs, but he has only one complexion."

"I know that there is no more unprofitable occupation than assigning motives for other people's conduct. Each one of us has one great task sufficient to absorb all our energies if we performed it creditably, which is to bring the average of our conduct up so that our own best moments may not be used against us as an evidence of hypocrisy."

Larry's Party

Larry's Party / Carol Shields
Toronto: Random House, c1997.
339 p.

I've owned this book for quite a while now, and finally picked it up to read. I'd heard it had some elements involving mazes and labyrinths in it, which is the main reason I was interested. But I hadn't realized until I started reading how very much the labyrinth is involved in this entire story -- everyone interested in mazes and labyrinths should really read this! Each section opens with a title page and an image of an historical maze -- I enjoyed identifying each one and noting the discussion about the names and forms of mazes and labyrinths in the text. As this is what really struck me about this book, I will review it from my perspective as a labyrinth facilitator and aficionado.

The story is this: Larry Weller, the main character, starts out as a florist in Winnipeg (and the city is given a fairly nice role too). It's the career he sort of stumbled into after high school. He gets married young, and on his honeymoon in England he encounters Hampton Court maze, and it is true love.

He builds a maze in his yard, carefully planting and pruning shrubs to form a design of his own making. His wife Dorrie, unfortunately, dislikes both the maze and Larry's devotion to it so much that she has it partially destroyed. The marriage is also destroyed in the process.

Larry moves out; he finally leaves his floral career to move to Chicago and become a professional maze builder. He meets a new, young wife: they go to England on a Guggenheim fellowship and visit many, many continental and British mazes. Then she leaves him as well.

Larry finally moves back to Canada, this time to Toronto where his sister lives. He finds a new girlfriend and they host the titular party when both of Larry's ex-wives are coincidentally in Toronto on the same weekend. As they all have dinner in a glorious confusion of voices and personalities, Larry realizes some long-hidden truths about himself and about love.

The novel finishes with an excerpt from Bradfield's 'Sentan Wells' (1854), and at this point some of the things that had been bothering me about the story made sense.

Some run the Shepherd's Race - a rut
Within a grass-plot deeply cut

And wide enough to tread - 

A maze of path, of old designed

To tire the feet, perplex the mind

Yet pleasure heart and head;

'Tis not unlike this life we spend,

And where you start from, there you end.

If you think of the entire book as a labyrinth, the progression of the story and the manner of telling it are perfectly balanced. The book is made up of various sections, each named "Larry's *whatever*" and this gave me the impression of a set of linked short stories. This impression was made stronger by the constant repetition of certain elements, such as Dorrie's dislike of his maze, or Larry's experience with his father, within many sections. It happened too frequently to be an editing slip-up so I pondered the significance of this initially irritating habit -- and decided that it was representative of the way we think about our lives. Certain stories keep being retold, either to others or in our own minds. We dwell on certain facts and not others.

Then again, looking at the story as a labyrinth, it makes sense that things repeat. As you walk a labyrinth, you circle around and come back to nearly the same spot you were before, just one path over. The perspective changes depending on where you are on the path, and where you are in relation to others who may also be walking the same path. You circle around the central question both coming and going. And as T.S. Eliot said so pithily, "And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

I'd held off on reading this because (gasp) I am not really a big fan of Carol Shields' style. And here too, I found her style a bit tedious at certain points. The time frame of the book kept me puzzling over where and how the action happened as well. But, Larry's life was full enough that it worked beyond the details. Of course, his fascination with mazes parallels mine so that was enough for me. However, Shields does give us a fairly complicated cast of characters who were interesting on their own, enough that I would like to see this story told from the women's point of view! Using this metaphor, however, shaped the story a little bit artificially, fitting it into the frame neatly. The ending, happy as it might be considered, and concluding with a verse, recalled some of Shakespeare's romances -- all is apparently well and both true love and the power of words have triumphed in the end.

In any case, this book explains Shields' connection with the labyrinth, and is a clear reason for the Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth that is found in Winnipeg. A fitting tribute.

Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth Design

(there is an interesting discussion of Shields' use of this symbol and its metaphorical resonance in the book "Garden Plots", some of which can be read online via Google Books if you are interested)

Dance, Gladys, Dance

Dance, Gladys, Dance / Cassie Stock
Edmonton: NeWest, 2012.
341 p.

This debut novel by Cassie Stock was great fun to read. I loved the design and the concept -- art and craft intertwine and the cover and interior design both reflect a doily design that hints at "old lady" but ends up being so much more.I also enjoyed the fact that it is set in Winnipeg -- she names the city and uses its landmarks and buildings in the book.

As the story opens, our 27 year old protagonist Frieda Zweig has given up on her goal of life as an artist. She's one of those women who have lost their way, and are slightly awkward and outsider-ish. She's staying with her very successful and very traditionally feminine friend Ginny while she tries to sort herself out, and impulsively responds to the following personal ad she's stumbled on while looking through the papers for a job:

BEAUTIFUL old phonograph for sale. 78 record player. Excellent condition. Gladys doesn’t dance anymore. She needs the room to bake. Bring offer.   Ph. 254-9885.

When she arrives at the house she's called, however, there is no gramophone, only a room to rent. So she takes it. And finds out that there is more than one inhabitant of the house: Gladys is indeed still in residence, as the most entertaining ghost I've come across in a while. She appears and disappears at will, telling Frieda her life story (heart breaking!) and encouraging Frieda to return to painting. To me, she seems to represent the ancestral past, of women who were held back, and serves as a reminder that we have so much opportunity to create and express our selves: if we don't want to do it for ourselves, we need to think of all the others who didn't have the chance, and not take our freedoms for granted! However, Stock does not get preachy or "issue bound" when she's telling the story... that is simply the feeling the Gladys brought out in me.

This novel is quite dense with characters -- Frieda is living with her friend Ginny at the beginning; she gets to know both Gladys and her new landlord Mr. Hausselman quite well; her millionaire exboyfriend Norman and his mother show up; Mr. Hausselman's son Whitman is convinced to return home for a brief visit, and introduces a local woman, Marilyn (a tough screenwriter) to the mix; the next door neighbour Miss Kesstle (a master crocheter) and a young girl named Girl also become integral to the tale. The relationships between all of these characters are unusual and don't take the easy route -- no simple pairing up going on here. Mr. H teaches at a downtown centre for youth, which focuses on the arts as a way to give underserved kids a way to find meaning in their lives. When the government threatens to close it down, all the characters come together to form a protest (which in itself is pretty creative and entertaining).

At its heart this story is about creating a life: whether that's through art, craft, business or relationships. Creative power bubbles throughout, and I found that the narrative really honoured Frieda's painting as well as Miss Kesstle's crocheting prowess, and Girl's cardboard box art installations. Whitman is a film-maker and Marilyn, a screenwriter who's hit bottom. Marilyn is an interesting character: successful by selling her screenplays to Whitman, she is also an addict and a very cynical, suspicious character. She has some very strong opinions about the role of women in art and about the subtle ways women are held back as artists. I loved how Stock takes Fine Art, domestic craft and feminism and stirs them all into a story that, despite its darker moments, sadnesses and soul-searching, ends up being uplifting and life affirming.

While all is well that ends well, not every character gets a happy ending. Some get a sad one while others end up with a realistically ambiguous status. But this book satisfies, and entertains, and provokes thought. A perfect book to sit down and discuss with other readers, with all its twists and turns and Ideas. This is a fabulous debut -- I will be looking out for further novels by Cassie Stock!

(Read the opening here)

************************************************

For this year's Canadian Book Challenge I've chosen as my theme "Small-Press-Palooza" Thus, for each book I'm including a link to the small press who has published it. Take a look -- there are wonderful small presses all over Canada!

More about Ne West Press

Queen of Hearts

Queen of Hearts / Martha Brooks

Toronto: Groundwood, c2010.

206 p.

Tuberculosis was a terrible diagnosis even just a few decades ago. The infectious nature of the disease led to the growth of Sanatoriums, in which the diseased were quarantined while they went through their lengthy treatments (some were there for years). There was a Sanatorium in Saskatoon, abandoned by the time I knew of it, but the great hulking empty building always fascinated me and yet spooked me when I was a young teen. I never broke in to go exploring like others we'd heard about; simply looking at it from a distance was creepy enough, and I have a couple of photos from a series that an artistic friend of mine created before the building disappeared in 1990.

So when I received an ARC of this teen novel, set during wartime in a prairie sanatorium, I immediately sat down and read the whole book.

Brooks spent her childhood on the grounds of the Ninette Sanatorium in Manitoba, since her father was on the medical staff, and she has created the fictional Pembina Hills Sanatorium as the setting of this story. But her familiarity with such a place is clear. The setting and the relationships between the patients are both clearly drawn and very believable. Brooks details some of the more uncomfortable treatments, such as naked sunbathing, sleeping outside on winter nights so the cold air could help the lungs, or laying absolutely still unable to do anything at all, not even read. She also mentions some of the disfiguring and invasive treatments that bad cases could suffer.

The basic plot is this: It is 1940, on the prairies of Manitoba. Marie-Claire Coté is the eldest of three children, whose lovable Uncle Gerard shows up tired out from riding the rails trying to find work. His exhaustion and constant cold turn out to be TB, and he is taken off the to "the San". Sadly, he passes away there, and shortly after all three children are diagnosed with TB as well. They are sent off to the San, but it is segregated by gender and age and seriousness of infection, so all three are separated. This is one of the hardships of the treatment. Marie-Claire is the main character, and she develops a hard-won friendship with her roommate, Signy, who has been there for 7 years and is pretty much unvisited by her parents by this time (though she does receive elaborate gifts).

There are new relationships developed during the two years that Marie-Claire has to stay in the Sanatorium, both with Signy and one of the nurses who turns into a mentor, and with a teenage boy who was a patient as well. Alongside the isolation and restricted circle of the San, the story draws in world events, with the shadow of the war hovering, shown in letters that Marie-Claire and Signy exchange with soldiers who have gone overseas.

The story captures an historical moment that young readers may not be familiar with and it does so in clear writing that doesn't pull any punches, but yet is not graphic or gratuitously disturbing. The atmosphere of the book is one of hope, showing Marie-Claire's growth into an adult sense of responsibility and loyalty. Fans of the constantly ill and dying heroines of Lurlene McDaniel's books may enjoy this, and go away with a brighter sense of optimism and a new understanding of historical reality.

For more detail, Lucy Silag writes an excellent review in the Globe & Mail

The Children of Mary by Bociurkiw

The Children of Mary / Marusya Bociurkiw
Toronto: Inanna, c2006.
207 p.

I had heard of this author but hadn't read her when I found this book on the shelves of a second hand bookstore. It's a lovely object in itself; nice cover and weight and so on, and it was a book I wanted to read especially because of the Ukrainian elements. I was richly rewarded there.


It is the tale of three generations of Ukrainian women, centred around Winnipeg, with the heart of the story set in the 70's. Two sisters, Sonya and Kat, are growing up in a Ukrainian neighbourhood but are absolutely Canadian, focused on Abba and popular culture. Their grandmother Maria and mother Tatyana have both had terrible marriages, with men who are absent either relationally or in actuality. The story is most definitely one focused on women, with Kat and Sonya both eventually realizing that their sexual preference is lesbian. Though this story at first sounds like a typical multigenerational immigration narrative, it is in truth anything but. It is creative and complex, with multiple layers of meaning, and varied themes to be drawn out.

As the book begins, Kat and Sonya, bored and at loose ends, end up joining the Children of Mary, a church group for Ukrainian and Polish Catholic girls; the religious element exacerbates Kat's issues and she ends up creating stigmata in Sonya's hands and feet. After this display she is sent to spend the summer with her distant father, and Sonya is sent off to stay with her Baba, who lives in the country and spends her time making up herbal concoctions and warning Sonya to stay away from the river and the rusalky, the river spirits. It is after this summer that Kat changes, and grows up past Sonya's ability to keep up with her older sister. Kat gets into the hippie scene of the 70's, with drugs and sex taking over her life; she eventually runs away from home, and after some time, is found dead from a car accident. This trauma affects the family deeply, with both the embarrassment of Kat's behaviour and the unresolved grief of her death overshadowing Sonya and Tatyana in the years to come. This novel explores how such unresolved trauma can flow through the future and wear away a person, shaping their life, much as water can wear a path through the landscape by its sheer constancy.

The Rusalky, and indeed rivers in general, are a central theme in the book. Perhaps rivers reference the fluidity of memory, the sense of being drowned in our family and its dysfunction, or the tenacity exhibited by flooding or by remaining flowing underground long after they've been paved over by civilization. The Rusalky themselves are a strong symbol of the feminine element of water and of the belonging Sonya is searching for, both within her Ukrainian community and within her more personal lesbian community.

The narration shifts between first person accounts by Sonya and Maria, with brief dream narratives by Tatyana slipped in here and there. I admired Maria for her strength and her knowledge, while finding Sonya a very tough survivor, trying to make her way in the world while remaining true to herself. It is Tatyana that I feel the most sympathy for, however, as she is the in-between generation, not really Ukrainian but not as Canadian as her daughters either. She is also weighed down by a useless ex-husband whose absence is a major theme of Sonya and Kat's childhood.

A large part of Sonya's self growth takes place after she moves to Toronto and redefines herself according to her individuality and sexuality. She experiences the lesbian scene, meets Zoe who becomes her partner of 14 years, and yet has commitment issues that result in many affairs. There is a great deal of frank and mature subject content in these chapters, so if that makes you uncomfortable this may not be the book for you.

The writing in this novel is beautiful; powerful and flowing with the strength of the Red River itself. Each setting, whether Winnipeg's North End or Toronto's lesbian community (from the 70's to the 90's), is evoked with precision yet with a sense of gentle mockery. The tone never becomes maudlin or heavily nostalgic, rather Bociurkiw is able to draw out the ironies and amusing inconsistencies that people display everywhere, no matter how different they think they are. People are portrayed as complex and valued whether or not their actions are either incomprehensible or amusing. Judgement has no place in this book, rather, the characters seek understanding. It is a book that deals with sexuality, gender, class, nationality, and identity, and provides multiple routes to discuss these topics. It was a challenging read, but had many rewarding moments.

Personally, I found the Ukrainian elements of most interest, appreciating how she could express the different generations so convincingly, revealing the shifting nature of national identity. And I must mention her ability to use food as a convincing metaphor and a major element of the narrative. Really, there are many other things I could talk about in this book, but I would just recommend reading it to experience a full immersion in the watery world of the Children of Mary.

Wild Geese by Ostenso

Wild Geese / Martha Ostenso

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989, c1925.

309 p.

This is a classic Canadian novel, one which has been selected by Melanie at Roughing it in the Books as part of the Canada Reads Independently project hosted by Kerry of Pickle Me This. It has been on my list of things to read for a long, long time, so this finally pushed me to pick it up.

This novel, set in Manitoba, deals with a family under the thumb of a domineering, selfish man, Caleb Gare. His wife Amelia is browbeaten because he knows her life's secret; she had a son out of wedlock who was given up for adoption. Caleb uses this fact to force Amelia to follow along with his plans and his habitual thwarting of their children's desires and needs.

They have four children; the oldest, Martin, is twenty and slow thinking, but there are inklings he is beginning to see that the way they live is not quite right. Eldest daughter Ellen is completely under his thumb; she has very bad sight but is only given a hand-me-down set of glasses which are not her prescription -- she thus has continually irritated and aching eyes, but follows along with everything her father says because she does not want to have to admit that his treatment is atrocious. Daughter Judith is the focal point of the story - strong, beautiful as a wild creature, as stubborn as Caleb and full of raging desire, Judith will not be cowed. Her desire for neighbour Sven Sandbo adds drama to the story, as he would like to marry her, and Judith must decide whether to buck Caleb's orders and leave the rest of the family to pay the consequences of her escape. There is also a younger son, Charlie, but he appears at the edges of the story and does not play any real part in the action, other than to skulk around acting as selfish and sneaky as Caleb. There is no indication by the end of the book what will become of him, but one can hope he won't turn out as a replica of his abusive and nasty father. The routine of the family is one of constant work; they must all work themselves ragged, keeping the farm going to provide maximum profit for Caleb, who oversees their duties, watching rather than helping. They are not allowed to leave the farm without his express permission.

Into this dysfunctional setting comes a young schoolteacher, Lind Archer. She is to take the local school for a year, and Caleb and Amelia board her -- although this seems unlikely in one way, Caleb is on the school board and so prides himself on his importance that he must have the privilege of boarding the teacher. Lind's view as an outsider allows us to see this story as it unfolds, and her unintentional influence is just enough to drive Judith to action.

I have to say this was a really uncomfortable read for me. In style, it was very much of its time, something I am used to reading in New Canadian Library selections. But it had a dark energy, a sexuality and a violence which was disturbing. Caleb literally made my skin crawl; I wished someone would just put an end to him already - he was a truly horrible man, the more so for his habit of speaking softly and 'kindly' as he laid down his edicts and forbade anyone anything they wanted. As Judith finally has enough and reacts, his violent response was in character but so awful. I'll remember this novel for the dreadful character of this overbearing man, but also for the grit and power of Judith in standing up to it.

It was quite a read, and surprisingly for a novel of the Canadian realist tradition, it does not end in tragedy all around. Perhaps this is because there is still the influence of a more romantic tradition evident, especially in the characters of Lind and neighbour Mark Jordan, as well as some of the more lyrical descriptions of Manitoba. There is a rather satisfying ending, actually, despite all appearances. As Charlotte at Inklings says of this book, "If you’re going to make your reader hurt, you ought to give them some kind of release... Ostenso does not punish us in this manner, but instead offers us a very well-considered and beautifully executed climax and conclusion. I can’t recommend this one enough."

I'd second that: although this is not a perfect book nor one that I will likely ever love as much as some others do, it was a fascinating read, full of descriptions of the land that is the only thing Caleb really loves, and of the social milieu of this small Manitoba community of farmers - Icelandic, Hungarian, Norwegian, and more. I enjoyed the sense of place, and although I couldn't admire the Gare family (Caleb was just too horrible), Ostenso's skill in drawing these characters is significant and impressive. It's a powerful book and one with a lot more energy than some of the other New Canadian Library titles I had to read during my school years.

Lysenko's Yellow Boots

Yellow Boots / Vera Lysenko NeWest, 1992, c1954. 355 p. After all that list-making it is time to read a few of the books on the lists! I've begun with Yellow Boots, a classic of Ukrainian Canadian literature. This is the story of Lilli Landash, a young Ukrainian living in Manitoba in the 1930s. She has ten brothers and sisters, and is considered a 'gypsy' girl: born at twilight and looking a little different she is not nurtured by her parents, rather she is sent out to work in her aunt's home from the age of six. After five years of service she becomes ill, so ill that her death seems imminent, and that is where our story begins. Lilli is taken back to her parents home, and fights the odds, surviving and living with her parents from then on. However, she is still not a favoured child, and does much of the work around the house. She is known as Gypsy until her one year of schooling, where the Scottish teacher, overwhelmed by all the Ukrainian Marys in his class, renames them all for flowers, and Gypsy becomes Lily (or Lilli as she misspells it). Her special love is the prairies, though - she loves to be outside and is rapturous over the beauties of sky and birds and sounds. She is extremely musical and this is what leads her to her future. Each chapter describes a cultural event, as well as following Lilli's growth toward adulthood. For example, the first chapter when Lilli is so ill is also used as a way in which to explain traditional death rituals of the Bukovynian (Ukrainian) family. They have a Christmas in one chapter, a wedding in another, a funeral in a third. While this does feel a little forced, it is still full of fascinating information, revealed in a way that draws you in via all your senses. The book also has a proto-feminist feel, with Lilli knowing in her heart that she is meant to grow and succeed, not to follow her father's orders and marry an old and lascivious neighbour at the age of sixteen in order to secure more farmland. She flees the farm, moving to Winnipeg and making it as a singer, drawing together the opportunity that the new world offers with the love of tradition and her Bukovynian past, by singing traditional songs. She also learns the songs of other cultures she comes across in Winnipeg - a Yiddish tune, a Japanese lullaby. She is the example of the perfect multicultural immigrant, willing to meld her lifestyle with the dominant Anglo-Canadian culture while preserving the arts of her own. Other women's issues appear in the story - the plight of servant girls in the city, the status of a widow in the small town, and so on. The story is engrossing for all the detail of farming in those communities - the small mindedness and superstition as well as the generosity and the hard, hard work that was expected of all. However, it was written in the fifties, and the author's multicultural idealism does show through. The change in the communities as they become more "Canadian" is clear, but Lilli does her best to retain some of the tradition through her songs. When, as a successful adult, she returns to the farm, her mother is described as wearing a house dress from a department store, and the younger girls wished to prepare a meal for Lilli using canned food and store bought ingredients on the new stove - it was her mother who knew that Lilli would prefer a true Bukovynian meal made in the old fashioned way. Since Lilli has only been away from the farm for seven years, it does seem a bit odd that all the Ukrainian habits of her family have vanished so quickly. I wouldn't say that it is fantastically successful as a novel, but as a social document showing a possible life of that time it does prove intriguing. Lilli is a good character, full of self-analysis, ambition, talent and grit. Her absorption in beauty and in music are revealing, and her constant observation of everything around her from the point of view of the outsider creates a detailed look at a way of life which was already gone by the time this book was written. I found the first part of the book most interesting, with Lilli surrounded by her traditional family and all the habits they held. Once Lilli moves into Winnipeg, the interest shifts and we are seeing the integration of many different cultures into one big city. The role of women in this era is in evidence, across many social levels: the author was from a poor background and she held fairly socialist political views, which is apparent in the way she discusses issues from the viewpoint of the poor characters - the farm girls, the maids - as well as the matrons of the city. (She was also falsely accused of being a Communist during the Cold War Era when it was a real issue, and it stuck to her for quite a long time). There are a few elements of the book that I found uncomfortable from my modern perspective - including the idea that Lilli could only escape from her overbearing father through the intervention of other men, like her schoolteacher, or the choirmaster she meets in Winnipeg. And I wasn't too keen on the conclusion; it was as if Lysenko didn't know quite how to end it and married Lilli off because that is what a "happy ending" should look like. Nonetheless, this is a great piece of Canadiana that should be considered part of the historical record along with better known novels of that era.

Sidura Ludwig: Holding my Breath

Holding My Breath / Sidura Ludwig

Toronto: Key Porter, c2007.

266 p.

I also got through two of my choices for the Canadian Book Challenge over the Thanksgiving weekend (there's a lot to be said for days off!)

Here's the first one I read -- it's set in Winnipeg, Manitoba in the 50's & 60's, among the Jewish community. Beth Levy is a young girl when her grandmother dies and she and her parents move into the family house, taking responsibility for Beth's two aunts, Carrie and Sarah. Carrie is a grown woman but Sarah is a teenager, much younger and less interested in tradition than her elder sisters.

The story moves through the years from Beth's childhood until she is ready to spread her wings and head away for college. Each chapter is from Beth's point of view but focuses on different moments in her upbringing; her mother's rise into the highest ranks of the Jewish women's organizations and her concern for tradition and keeping her family close by; her aunt Carrie's fixation on her long deceased brother Phil and on a secret that she keeps for many years; and her aunt Sarah's dissatisfaction with life in Winnipeg and her longing to escape - which she does in later years.

The telling is quite measured and subdued: there seemed to be a little too much telling at the expense of showing, at least to my taste. However, I did find the story interesting because it was about a situation that I knew little about, that of the Jewish community in Winnipeg, and I also enjoyed getting to know some of the characters. A few of the minor characters especially were quite intriguing; some of Beth's friends were people I would have liked to get to know. I also liked Beth's interests in life -- even though it is the 60's she is fascinated with science, especially astronomy. This interest is formed partly from her aunt Carrie sharing Phil's love of the stars with Beth since childhood, but the result is that Beth studies astronomy and physics in college. This leads to the crisis point of the novel: Beth is offered a graduate student position in Chicago and with her aunt Carrie's help overcomes the sense of duty drilled into her in order to achieve her dreams. She discovers throughout the novel that she is not her mother, nor her aunts, but is made up of a mixture of family traits -- and that she has to choose which parts of her character are most important for her to develop.

Overall, it was a good first novel but a little slow moving. It didn't grab me, but it did illuminate aspects of Canadian life that I was unfamiliar with in a way that kept me reading. I think that the difficulty I had with it was that I preferred Aunt Carrie to Beth so would have been more intrigued by the story Carrie might have told; but that is my own bias, not a fault of the book. It is still an eminently readable story which just might be a favourite of another reader - don't pass it over on my opinion alone.

Other readers:

Boston Bibliophile gives it a "to borrow" rating

The Literary Word rates it a favourite

Dovegreyreader calls it a pleasure to read

Blue Becomes You

Blue Becomes You / Bettina von Kampen
Winnipeg: Great Plains, c2003.
256 p.

I picked this book up on a whim; it was in the library and is set in Manitoba, so I thought I'd give it a try as part of my Canadian Book Challenge reading. I'd never heard of it before, but it rewarded the chance I took on it! It was an enjoyable read -- with a few flaws, but overall giving us an interesting main character and some enjoyable musings on life, as well as drawing a clear picture of the Manitoba landscape.

Charlotte lives in Norman, Manitoba, and is retiring from her bakery job due to heart problems. She's been working in the bakery for over 40 years; and how this came to pass is at the crux of the novel. As a teenager, Charlotte loved jazz. She played in a jazz trio at the local bar and had big plans to leave Norman as soon as she finished school, to travel the world and become a jazz musician. However, she ends up missing that one chance to leave, deciding to stay home for a little while to care for her depressed father. Then it seems to her that she is just too old, too settled to change her routine. Her thoughts and her recollections of life and what events brought her to this moment were the best parts of the book for me. I really enjoyed Charlotte, and her no-nonsense attitude; she didn't waste time wallowing in regret or despair, rather taking things as they were and realizing there was no point in feeling sorry for herself. Still, the life she wound up with, that of a baker who wakes when everyone else is asleep, and is bound by a limited circumference, is not perhaps all there is to her. The last line of the novel is pure brilliance, casting the story in a different light and opening up all kinds of possibilities in the imagination. I'll include it here for anyone who can't find a copy to read; it's too good not to share. Highlight to read it -- don't want to give it away inadvertently to those of you who will pick this book up!

After tonight, nothing would ever be the same. Finally.

Surrounding Charlotte we have a varied cast of characters. Her sister June, who did leave town but had a rather disappointing time of it, has come home in her retirement, back to the family home which she now shares with Charlotte. She's a different person than Charlotte; on a regular daytime schedule she joins clubs and gets involved in all kinds of activities. Together with Charlotte's boss, June is planning a big retirement party which Charlotte is not too excited to have to attend. Alongside June there is also the staff at the bakery -- Wade, a closeted gay man; Doris, a young high-school dropout who aspires to become an actress; and Vi, her boss, a high achieving woman who, with the city council, wants to make Norman an up and coming place to be for business. There is also the neighbour over the back fence, long time resident and immigrant from India, Kuldip Channa. Charlotte begins to feel connected to all these people as she moves through the weeks prior to her retirement, musing about what life might become when she doesn't have to wake at 2:30 am every day, or about how long her weak heart will hold out.

While I enjoyed some of these side stories, I really was most interested in Charlotte, her family history and her experiences. It felt a little like Von Kampen was trying to stuff in all aspects of small town living vs. city life; ie: views of homosexuality (using Wade the baker) or of racism (as shown in Kuldip's life). I felt that some of those elements weren't entirely necessary to the story, and especially in regard to Kuldip, not fully convincing. It is an understandable impulse; small town life is not a singular as outsiders may think and Norman seems more complex for the hints at all these difficulties. But to me, the strength of this book was Charlotte, her music, and her perceptions. An example of this is at a moment when she realizes she's walked to the bakery so many times that she could tell where she was just by the elevation of the sidewalk. This reflects on more than just one's surroundings:

It went beyond familiar, like the way people could find their way through their homes in the pitch dark of night. The way they roamed through the patterns of their thoughts, laid down over the years in the mind, always finding the same thoughts next to each other.

I liked this story because it also had a sense of humour about itself, even with some of the awful things that happen. It didn't feel like 'prairie gothic', by not taking itself too seriously, but still provides a far-from-glib read. It muses on whether missed chances are ever truly final, whether going down one road at one point means you can never branch off it again. I enjoyed it especially for the character of Charlotte, and for the inclusion of baking, jazz and some lovely evocations of dawn breaking halfway through Charlotte's work day.

Prairie Bridesmaid

The Prairie Bridesmaid / Daria Salamon
Toronto : Key Porter, c2008.
(novel with soundtrack)


I just read this new book; it came across my desk and was appealing enough for a trip home with me. I hadn't planned to read this for the Canadian Book Challenge but there it is. However, I think there's a reason why most chick lit is set in New York or L.A. or somewhere glamorous like that. When it's set in Winnipeg it calls for a HUGE suspension of disbelief!


I think I'm being a bit facetious calling this chick-lit; after all it is published in hardcover and by a publisher not exactly known for their huge chick lit backlist. Still. It is! (stomping of feet) If it had only been published in trade paper with cartoony font for the title and the photo more like a sketch instead, it would be obvious. :)


The synopsis:
Anna Lasko, in her early 30's, has a nasty & emotionally abusive boyfriend. He goes away for 6 months, giving her time to break it off properly, which entails buying and then not reading self-help books and being ambushed with an 'intervention' by her caring friends -- one pregnant, one a bride-to-be and one a large woman happy with her size. Anna is a mess, and like most heroines of these kinds of books, she smokes, lives admidst chaos and is often quite annoying.


What I Liked:
I should have loved it; it has Ukrainians! That's one of the reasons I wanted to read it, not often you get a book set in the Canadian prairies with a character of Ukrainian background that isn't "about" being Ukrainian. I did like the way that Anna and her Baba are just there, not standing as symbols of some larger "Ukrainian experience". Rather, they are simply people who live in Manitoba who happen to be of Ukrainian descent, and they do things like make perogies and decorate eggs in a matter of fact way, not as ethnic colour. I really liked that touch. Her Baba is a tough old bird and made me laugh. Here's Baba giving relationship advice:

Relationships take work. Life with your Gido sure wasn't easy. I hung on because he's all I had. It certainly didn't help when his parents showed up from the Old Country to live with us.... To think I came here to get away from them and then they followed us. The buggers.

I found many of the minor characters and situations more entertaining than the primary story. Anna, alone in her ramshackle house, takes to chatting with the squirrel who has taken up residence in the attic. Those conversations are quite funny and quirky. Her parents are interesting and odd and I would have liked to read more about them as well. If only the light touch had continued, rather than the continuous moaning over the horrible behaviour of Adam, the nasty boyfriend. He's a jerk, we can clearly see that. We wish Anna would just get rid of him already.

What I Didn't Like:
There are tons of subplots in this, and sometimes it feels a bit too much. For example, Anna's sister Natalia has become involved with a cultish boyfriend and moved to Iran, where he takes a second wife as permitted by Islam and simultaneously knocks up Natalia. This cries out for a book of its own. At the end of the book Anna decides she will go to Iran to help her sister with the birth and hopefully rescue her and bring her home. She buys a plane ticket and heads off, lickety split. Has she never heard of passports or visas? I found this a bit of a stretch. I also felt that Anna's three friends were all constructed to play a certain role; they all had specific issues they represented so that these issues could be brought into the book.

I think my main difficulty with this book was simply that I don't really like chick-lit. I like the premise, I thought the setting was great, but somehow the main character in these books always turn me off. They are so self-centred and whiny and such a mess! If you like Bridget Jones or Sophie Kinsella etc. you may like this (though there isn't much shopping in it!) I had a hard time warming up to Anna, though, especially when she acts like a bratty 13 yr old at her friend Sarah's wedding. The point of the title is that Anna has been a bridesmaid so many times and she just wants to be a bride for once. Here she is stuck in a horrible breakup and all Sarah can think about is her wedding! So she sabotages the wedding in a passive aggressive manner, by cutting a huge chunk out of the back of the cake, by stealing the best man's speech, etc. etc. I found Anna in this scene excessively childish and really not sympathetic at all.


Salamon is clearly a genius at marketing and promotion, however; her website is full of great stuff including a downloadable soundtrack for the book, created by various Canadian musicians. It's very neat. I will look out for her next book and just hope I get along better with the next heroine.

Canadian Book Challenge final round-up

It's the end of May, and I'd better mention two books I've read for John's Canadian Book Challenge. Almost done now...but I don't know if I'll make it to all 13 this time around. Still have that pesky Nunavut to read about! But there's always the 2nd Canadian Book Challenge...

Anyhow, I've recently read two which I'll mention here in brief review:

The Ukrainian Wedding / Larry Warwaruk

Regina, SK: Coteau, c1998.

Set in the Interlake region of Manitoba during WWII, this is a tale of a Ukrainian community holding on to their past and their legends, especially that of the rusalka, or water spirit. It contrasts an immigrant community maintaining their customs with the need to become part of their new country. It's a mix of folklore and a murder mystery, and is peopled with fascinating characters. The action is set in motion at the wedding of the title, a summer wedding where the heat and the drinking and the dancing result in a married man, Yuri, running away with Marusia, a 'loose woman'. They return shamefacedly some time later, and the small community is shocked by the murder of Marusia, shortly after. The murder forces them to adapt to the world they now live in, as they say, "murder is murder, whether in Ukraine, or in Canada". While the older members of the town cling to religion and their old world beliefs, the younger people see a wider world. Some of the young men go off to Winnipeg to join the army, and one girl, Lena Melnyk, dreams of going to Winnipeg to work as a domestic, or even to Toronto to work in the factories -- anything to get away from her past. The events of the war are woven into the story through newspapers and radio, but the focus of the story is on the Ukrainian worldview of this group, which is becoming Canadian in the younger generation. The novel has a bit of a dreamy feel despite the fact of murder and the quite frank sexual content. It's an interesting example of how Canadian-Ukrainian writing often looks toward the past, to the history and culture of immigrants, while modern Ukrainian writing looks ahead to current events in Ukraine. All in all, this was a fascinating read.

Ptarmageddon : a Robyn Devara mystery / Karen Dudley
Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, c2006.

The second book covers the Yukon Territory, as it is a mystery set primarily in Whitehorse and further north in the Willow Creek Adventure and Wilderness Retreat. The research scientist and amateur sleuth Robyn Devara is going up north because her boyfriend Kelt is involved in a research project on pikas. But the most intriguing fact here is that a fellow scientist, an ornithologist named Selena Barry, has been murdered and has willed all her notes to Robyn -- who never met Selena. Among the geologists, ornithologists, and varied research scientists, Robyn must figure out who could have killed her and who might kill again. It's a quick, light read for anybody interested in birds, ecology, wilderness or just plain mysterious fun. And it has lots of information about the Yukon, too!