I enjoyed reading this book a good deal, and got a tremendous sense of the personality of Hugh MacLennan, who in the pages of this book came across toI enjoyed reading this book a good deal, and got a tremendous sense of the personality of Hugh MacLennan, who in the pages of this book came across to me as a caring, ethical, and intellectual person, a humanist. The writing style was elegant and full of flourishes no longer generally admired. Reading this novel was something like visiting a scrimshaw museum, that way....more
Wow. Here is proof that when a writer follows a voice, and trusts that voice, and allows that voice to tell its story, something uniquely beautiful (aWow. Here is proof that when a writer follows a voice, and trusts that voice, and allows that voice to tell its story, something uniquely beautiful (and incomprehensibly true) can happen. How does this novel work? I don't care. It does....more
I have finished this book and I'm so glad I'm done with it. I can tell it's brilliant but at the same time I need to admit to myself that it bored me I have finished this book and I'm so glad I'm done with it. I can tell it's brilliant but at the same time I need to admit to myself that it bored me silly. I just need to throw that out there, this little bit of shameful truth, and to acknowledge my inability to appreciate this great, great book. As I read on from one page to the next I had this constant voice in my head saying things to me like: 'oh, wow, this so very well put,' and: 'oh gosh what a great scene, it really is so lovely, so true, about people coming to terms with one another's foibles, forgiving each other well enough that they can keep loving one another, in spite of their shortcomings,' and yet even as I was thinking all these lovely appreciative thoughts, I was very bored. I'm sorry, dear Canada....more
No one captures the loneliness and terror of everyday life the way Iain Reid does. I loved both of his former novels but I found this one to be uniqueNo one captures the loneliness and terror of everyday life the way Iain Reid does. I loved both of his former novels but I found this one to be uniquely moving, for the way it defines the indignities of old age. It allows me to experience the disorienting terror of everyday life when you are very old, and when you are losing your memories, and when you are completely at the mercy of those caregivers you've been assigned to, after some other person in your life decides you can't take care of yourself any longer--caregivers who may be good at what they do but who have no interest in you or history with you and who don't love you and yet they have complete power over you. They are the ones to decide how they cut your hair--do they listen to your idea, or just start cutting, assuming you're too far gone to really have an opinion? What choice do you have but to eat the food they put in front of you? How do you object to their constant infantilization of you when you are in fact helpless and losing most of your 'self' as the memories fade? There are familiar layers of non-knowingness to this novel that point in the direction of "horror story" and just maybe there is some sort of scary experiment going on and just maybe the protagonist is slowly being absorbed into a giant fungal entity ... but none of that was necessary to believe in, as anything more than a manifestation of one quiet lonely elderly mind ... I chose to read the novel as a profound meditation on what is lost, day by day, when our age catches up with us and when our minds begin to break down in ways nearly as predictable as what is happening to our bodies, as we approach the end.
A gripping story, full of mystery and love....more
I read this novel with such nostalgia-filled pleasure. It was like listening in on another era and being given the opportunity to understand what it wI read this novel with such nostalgia-filled pleasure. It was like listening in on another era and being given the opportunity to understand what it was like to be an intellectual thinking humane adult in the 1930's--to anticipate the rise of fascism, to ponder the relationship between one's morals and one's need to act, and most of all, to take it all so seriously--to truly believe that ideas mattered, that human relationships mattered.
Reading this novel is like falling into a time machine. It's not exactly realistic but it reflects important issues of its time. The characters behave and speak like characters in movies before Method Acting became the norm. It was almost as if there were a patina of filmic pops and cracks over the language as I read some of the dialogue.
Everyone is white. Everyone is extremely gender-pigeonholed. Men are intellectuals and women want to stay home and have babies. The one woman in the novel who has a career and dares to have intellectual ideas is talked about openly by the other characters as being mentally ill and she meets a terrible end. Somehow these things didn't bother me as I read because again there was a sense that I was viewing the past and in a way the flaws in the story were giving me a truer picture of a way of life of people of a certain class and outlook in those times.
The physical descriptions of Montreal and Canada are stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. They made me long for more contemporary fiction that takes the time to set a scene rather than assume that I as a reader won't have patience for it....more
At some point while reading this short story collection I fell into a vivid, visceral memory of a time when I was four years old and conspired with a At some point while reading this short story collection I fell into a vivid, visceral memory of a time when I was four years old and conspired with a friend to make a cake for a boy we both hated. Not because he was mean, but because his nose was always running. We made the cake out of sawdust and wooly-bear caterpillars, both of which could be found in abundance in the mill town where we lived, the kind of place where every step put you in danger of encountering one or the other. The cake-making process was gleeful. I don't remember feeling sorry for the caterpillars....more
The novel is achingly, vividly imagined, the narrative voice is smart and believable, the story is so interesting, and I loved it entirely. And yet I The novel is achingly, vividly imagined, the narrative voice is smart and believable, the story is so interesting, and I loved it entirely. And yet I wanted something more. I'm not sure what I wanted. I think maybe I wanted the story to matter more. I wanted it to mean something more. I wanted it to be revelatory along with being exhilarating and damn-great. I wanted the narrator's experiences to build into something more profound than they did. I wanted her to make some deeper realization about life, about her life, than I could glean here. Maybe it's here and I missed it. I'm more than happy to imagine reading this delightful story again and to find in it deeper meanings. On this read there was something cruel and smug about the ending especially that made the novel just one small step from perfect. I've just spent a lot of words trying to explain the absence of something that would have made this book a masterpiece instead of being an incredibly great novel. What's here is so very good. Every sentence. Every word....more
This novel perfectly executes its purpose, although some readers may not agree with me on first read, because the novel's purpose is veiled until you'This novel perfectly executes its purpose, although some readers may not agree with me on first read, because the novel's purpose is veiled until you've read it through at least once.
From the beginning the novel obviously deviates in significant ways from a classic psychological thriller. That shouldn't be held against it, though, because it is not a classic psychological thriller. It's in its own, claustrophobic, perfect little genre. Maybe it belongs to the genre of "unique"(but not in the genre of "really unique," because that term is semantically impossible, as the narrator of this book is quick to remind you).
It helped me to let go of any expectation. I let the novel lead were it would, without judgment. Instead of thinking of a given character: 'no person would ever behave this way,' I found myself thinking instead: 'the characters in this novel behave like they're all in a david lynch film.' Verisimilitude is not the goal here. Not even fictional verisimilitude. Even so there is an eerie logic to the story line, akin to dream logic, or nightmare, and it's what makes this novel such a tense read. Even at its most bonkers you feel inexorably led toward its crashing conclusion.
I loved the way the dialogue throughout seemed both intellectually valid and profoundly unhinged. I loved the way two characters in conversation could sound bizarrely aligned in their thinking, and then suddenly the conversation would reach a point where known facts began to contradict one another wildly, and events would spiral in an ever more hysterical direction, only to calm down at some point and allow me as a reader to rationalize the craziness I'd just read, and read on.
When I got to the end, I not only thought 'that was a great novel' but I also thought 'I wish I'd written this novel!' I felt very thrilled as a reader, and a little jealous as a writer, of how Reid pulls off this story. A deeply satisfying read....more
Heroine was a contradictory and exuberant and utterly unique read for me. In one way it made me sad, for the way a 30+ year old feminist novel remindsHeroine was a contradictory and exuberant and utterly unique read for me. In one way it made me sad, for the way a 30+ year old feminist novel reminds me that so little has changed...that what looks like social progress is often just a good patch that we happen to be living through, before the conservative forces return. In another way it exhilarated me, because it's formally so new, even after 3 decades. It reminds me of how writers constantly find new ways to express the inexpressible, and to overcome the limitations of language. I frequently had no idea what was going on! And yet each sentence was so captivating that I just kept being okay with it. Each sentence I could honest think: "I've never read that sentence before." This is stream of consciousness writing with a writer who might be the most exquisitely sensitive human being ever to have thought a thought. Beautiful images and a sense of frothy knowing-ness bounded along from page to page in a way that left me happy and satisfied to have spent time with Gail Scott....more
This novel is written with a supernatural attention to detail. It's as if Crummey has taken it upon himself to inhabit the interior spaces of the brotThis novel is written with a supernatural attention to detail. It's as if Crummey has taken it upon himself to inhabit the interior spaces of the brother and sister that he conjures up from his imagination. He inhabits their daily lives. He channels them onto the page for us, until I could see and feel what these characters see and feel. Never mind that the world he imagines for these two is like nowhere I could have imagined on my own--I'm there. At just this moment, I can't remember another novel I've read that so fully imagines the lives of its characters the way Crummey does here. The novel is bleak but full of beauty. It's a remarkable achievement....more
An enjoyable vivid read that gave humanity and voice to many different kinds of people--it's the kind of story that makes you understand that people hAn enjoyable vivid read that gave humanity and voice to many different kinds of people--it's the kind of story that makes you understand that people have not changed very much, at least not in the last few hundred years. The story rises above the many other times this story has been told because of the deeply individual interior voices Boyden imagines for each of the three main protagonists.
The more I learn about the backstory for this novel, however, the more troubled I am about recommending it. Is it all right, these days, to demonize a real people, and to give them a very different set of values and history, as Boyden apparently does to the Iroquois here? Did Boyden really need to do that? It's a complex decision to completely dismiss this novel, too, because there are scenes of great historical accuracy as well, for example a scene of the Hurons re-burying their dead in an elaborate ritual of personal sacrifice, meticulously detailed in the novel.
So I come out feeling that the novel needs to be read in context, and discussed for its flaws as well as for its shining moments.
A discussion of the novel in the magnificently thoughtful "Roundtable" Goodreads group led me to these critical reviews of Boyden's historical accuracy (as in, lack of it) that I think these and other reviews delving into these questions should be required reading alongside the novel itself:
After a promising beginning this novel quickly began to feel contrived to me, and then pointless. People die, or walk off into the snow, or show up unAfter a promising beginning this novel quickly began to feel contrived to me, and then pointless. People die, or walk off into the snow, or show up unexpectedly, or disappear unexpectedly, all in service to move the protagonist to some other location, rather than for any organic reason. The final denouement between protagonist and his wan and inexplicably conflicted benefactor ends with the protagonist reaching the same conclusions that he had reached already three times before in the novel.
A peripatetic novel works better for me when it reveals a character who is clearly learning and growing from his life experiences. In the case of this novel it felt like Washington Black was the same person in the beginning as he was the end, in spite of his travels and travails.
So: not for me. Two stars for some vivid period details....more
There is something so formal and restrained and lovely and lonely about this novella. Startling things happen, sure, but in such a matter-of-fact way There is something so formal and restrained and lovely and lonely about this novella. Startling things happen, sure, but in such a matter-of-fact way that it hardly seems to be out of the ordinary when a human woman, somewhat late in the novella, begins to find passionate fulfillment in an erotic and increasingly risky relationship with a bear.
I'm overcome with delight at how Marian Engel portrayed these scenes. And I'm overcome with gratefulness at the way Engel refuses to anthropomorphize this animal: the bear remains a bear, musty and uncivilized, farting and shitting on occasion, as animals do; and the animal seems neither exploited nor surprised by his explorations of the woman's body; and the woman in turn seems to need nothing from a bear than that it be a bear.
And I come back again in my thoughts about the novella to this idea: that this is a restrained, almost genteel story. The eroticism is presented in such a matter-of-fact way that there was no discomfort or prurient revulsion or anything at all in my head as I read, except a fascination at the way this restrained writing about a bestial relationship allowed all kinds of mythological and sociological implications weave into and out of my thoughts as I read. I remembered Pasiphaë having sex with a bull, for instance. But deeper than any of these connections with mythological stories I felt a connection with bear and woman as the meeting of two extremely lonely creatures, who find solace in one another, and even, yes, love. Remarkable....more
This novel rings brilliant changes on topics such as vomit--"The stew-like puddle stank beside the mattress"--and it does a wonderful job of representThis novel rings brilliant changes on topics such as vomit--"The stew-like puddle stank beside the mattress"--and it does a wonderful job of representing characters whose main way of spending their lives is to grow stupefied together on booze or drugs or occasionally sex. All the characters speak in a witty-gritty way that I admire, but it almost felt as if Robinson is so good at all of the above--especially good at drunken dialog, for instance, or of writing characters who make stupid choices, or writing scenes that ignite with a sudden flash of violence--that it got to be too much for me, where it was a story that moved in circles rather than forward. I'm still a big fan but I felt Robinson's writing strengths eventually overwhelmed the actual story....more
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