I began this book months and months ago now, and I kept intending to return to it. It focuses on a grandmother, mother, and granddaughter all living iI began this book months and months ago now, and I kept intending to return to it. It focuses on a grandmother, mother, and granddaughter all living in the same Toronto home. The granddaughter has been suspended from school for her aggressiveness. She’s an all-around smart aleck, and I can’t say I was too convinced by her voice. Grandmother is a “character�, verging on caricature, and mum is just generally troubled. The family, like Toews’s own, has been through a lot. A family member, the mother’s sister, has died from suicide and the members left are still traumatized.
I wasn’t crazy about the book but I really lost focus when the grandmother, with her jeeper-creepers, gee-golly-gosh, cliché-ridden speech took over to tell her granddaughter the story of her troubled mum. I tried; I really tried, but I’d just had enough.
Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for providing a digital copy. I’m sorry that I just couldn’t get on with this book....more
I have mixed feelings about Jocelyn Playfair’s 1944 novel set in wartime England. Early on in my reading of the book I wondered why the publisher, PerI have mixed feelings about Jocelyn Playfair’s 1944 novel set in wartime England. Early on in my reading of the book I wondered why the publisher, Persephone Books, had even decided to give it a second life.
The premise is promising enough: a woman in her thirties (with a young son) whose life was—tragically, according to some—derailed five years earlier by the death of her husband, Simon, is living in Brede, the enchanting manor house of her husband’s best friend, Charles Valery. It’s 1942 and Cressida Chance is making do by providing room and board to a somewhat motley crew of characters, people of different backgrounds and classes, most of them displaced by war. Cressida’s handsome younger brother, Rudolph “Dolphin� Standing, and their aunt, Jessica Ambleside, a slightly irascible Austenesque creation who’s come to Brede from London for a change of air, also figure in the narrative.
Only a couple of Playfair’s characters emerge with any clarity. Two of the males appear to be mouthpieces for the author’s opinions about war, which are inelegantly forced into a novel mainly concerned with romantic relationships. Playfair seems to have been a strong-minded, unconventional woman who could not help but air her views. The insertion of those views into the book turns what might otherwise be dismissed as women’s fiction into a not-entirely-successful novel of ideas and literary seriousness. While not exactly “types�, many of Playfair’s characters are caricatures, none more so than the monkey-faced little European count, Tori. He’s somehow made his way from an unidentified country (possibly Poland) to England. The reader is asked to believe he’s been smuggled out of a concentration camp and that he’s recuperating at Brede before heroically returning to his homeland on a “dangerous mission�, the details of which Playfair can’t be bothered to provide. Not surprisingly, Tori idolizes Cressida, who (the reader is regularly reminded) happens to be a woman of extraordinary beauty and kindness, attractive to men, yet arousing not a single iota of jealousy in women. Tori showers Cressida with affection, praise, and . . . lengthy spiritually instructive lectures intended to illuminate his beloved on the real roots of war. According to him, war is the externalization of the conflict between kindness and cruelty that rages within every human heart. With bated breath, Cressida hangs onto every one of the aristocratic windbag’s impassioned words. For the reader, who is much less virtuous than dear Cressida, the monologues are a trial to be endured.
The conflict in the novel arises from Playfair’s idiosyncratic reworking of “the marriage plot”—the presentation of a youngish woman who must choose between suitors. (It’s the backbone of several Victorian novels, including several by Thomas Hardy). Playfair does something rather different with it. While Cressida’s conflict of the heart eventually includes Tori, the romantic tension initially arises from her love for Brede’s owner, Charles Valery, who disappeared after Simon’s death. Playfair drops crumbs throughout the novel about how Cressida came to live at Brede and what really happened to Simon, including Charles’s role in the death. (view spoiler)[The two men argued over Cressida while riding in a car. The car crashed, and Charles alone survived. No great loss. Cressida discovered that any love she once had for her spoiled rich-boy husband, handsome as he was, had evaporated anyway. (hide spoiler)]
Playfair provides occasional shifts in point of view—from Cressida’s to that of the man she loves. We learn early on that Charles’s ship, part of a trans-Atlantic convoy, has been torpedoed, that he is the sole survivor of the wreck, and that he’s managed to get himself into the most well-equipped lifeboat you could possibly imagine. Sure there’s the dead body of an acquaintance that has to be disposed of, and there are a few inches of water that must be bailed out of the boat’s bottom, but—not to worry—our hero isn’t too diminished to do the heavy lifting and there’s a dipper handy to remove the excess water. There are also canisters of food and water . . . and even superior navigational charts! Under such circumstances, with the sea “spread around him like a sheet of winking sapphires,� what better use of unplanned downtime for a shipwreck survivor—a “tiny ugly blot, left by carelessness on an otherwise superb arrangement of colour”—than to nobly and philosophically contemplate his existence, and, like Tori, consider the aims and significance of war. Forget such lowly pursuits as actually struggling to survive or get oneself noticed and rescued by a boat or plane. Those challenges don’t come into play until day 14, well after Charles has ironed out his philosophy that war is due to men’s failing to think for themselves, their desire to protect what they see as rightly theirs (regardless of how that impacts the rest of world), and their failure to regard humanity as one.
There are some surprises in how Playfair’s novel ends. Ultimately, the author entirely—but not fully convincingly—subverts the marriage plot. Her two main male characters become warriors, but not in the conventional sense. Both are invested in the idea of taking personal action that will begin to change humanity’s course so that war no longer occurs. As for Cressida: she carries on at Brede, free of some of the traditional constraints on women, contributing in her own way to the making of a new world.
Rating: a solid enough 3.5, which I unfortunately cannot bring myself to round up....more
In this very slight short story, packaged in book form as a novella and fattened with many blank pages, Clavell focuses on an elementary school classrIn this very slight short story, packaged in book form as a novella and fattened with many blank pages, Clavell focuses on an elementary school classroom immediately after a war, when the victors have made control of the educational institutions in an unnamed western country—evidently the US—a priority. Dressed in olive drab, a young, pretty, fresh-smelling nineteen-year-old enters the classroom. She is “New Teacher�. In her light, entirely unaccented, perfect English, she directs the children’s frightened teacher, an old-school elderly spinster, to the principal’s office, and then proceeds with an expert deconstruction of the (American) pledge of allegiance. In a few short minutes, the flag is dismantled—its cloth is cut, a piece is distributed to each student, and the flag pole is tossed out the window. God is shown not to exist, and prayer is, of course, proved to be utterly ineffectual. No one, other than another human, will give you anything, New Teacher says. “Praying to God or anything or anyone is a waste of time.� In sweet tones, she also undermines parents and their old-fashioned ideas. The grown-ups with “bad thoughts� are being sent back to school to unlearn them. In fact, the father of Johnny, the only resistant student in the class, is one of them. Ultimately, though, even this boy submits to the teacher’s charm and gentle reprogramming. Candy is enough for New Teacher to gain power over Johnny’s classmates, but she must employ a different strategy with him. She acknowledges—strokes—his intelligence and need for power by appointing him class monitor.
The last few pages of this little book apparently present a reproduction of Clavell’s scrawling handwritten explanation of the genesis of the story. According to this account, years ago one of Clavell’s children asked for a dime as a reward for quickly, accurately, and fluently reciting the pledge of allegiance—without comprehending a single word of what she was saying. This concerned the author greatly. Not understanding what you’re signing on to, just obediently and unquestioningly doing what you’re told, and getting rewards for your easy compliance—as the story illustrates—sets you up to be indoctrinated, controlled, and exploited by others (including pretty, olive-drab-clad young women who are cogs in Dear Leader’s communist, atheistic, and oppressive system).
This is a facile, underwhelming little story, dressed up as a cautionary tale. It’s not quite clear whether the author thinks the pledge is a bad thing in itself (though I detected a slight whiff of horror at the possibility of a nation’s religion and belief in God being erased). What Clavell seems to be concerned about is citizens, particularly the youngest, not being encouraged to think about what they are taught. When an educational system values and fosters obedience and compliance in children, it consequently plays a major role in creating a society whose citizenry is vulnerable to manipulation and control—by its own government and others.
Little Jon tried to think. Everything was so unbelievably tangled in this world, with their laws and their money and their hates and their fighting foLittle Jon tried to think. Everything was so unbelievably tangled in this world, with their laws and their money and their hates and their fighting for power. He could see only one solution that might help . . .
While gazing at the night-time sky with his people, a boy falls through a hole in the hillside, ending up in another world. What surprises the reader is that the world “Little John� falls into is the human one. Impaired by amnesia from the impact of crashing down among the rocks in a cave, Jon tries to navigate the mountainous new landscape he finds himself in. Initially he relies on the guidance of animals with whom he can communicate telepathically. However, even they cannot save him from a nasty first encounter with a gun-toting malevolent human, Gilby Pitts (and his equally repugnant wife, Emma), after he unwittingly walks onto their land.
Shortly after this, Jon, who has the ability to sense the emotions and thoughts of others, makes contact with benevolent humans. The Beans—Mary, Thomas, and their children, Brooks and Sally—stop their pick-up truck on a nearby country road and take the boy home with them. However, Jon’s unfortunate confrontation with the unsavoury Mr. and Mrs. Pitts has already set him on the wrong track. The couple quickly spread the rumour that a “wild boy� is on the loose, a foreign-looking, “unnatural,� and strangely dressed being. Soon the hateful pair will report him for breaking, entering, and robbing a summer home that Mr. Pitts is responsible for minding when its owner is away. Gilby, it turns out, is intimately acquainted with stealing, having done so much of it himself. Lying and blaming come just as easily to him. He’s a classic vindictive and ignorant local yokel.
The Beans quickly figure out that Jon is not of this world. While some objects (books and radios) and concepts (kindness) are familiar to him, others (like automobiles) are not. That laws (and a government to make them) should really be necessary to keep people in line and that humans should actually use animals for food and clothing are ideas both foreign and troubling to Jon. The Beans marvel at the boy’s ability to read minds, know others� intentions, and effortlessly learn an entirely new language, English.
Thomas and his family willingly take on the job of protecting Jon from wrongful criminal charges. They recognize that they must help the boy recover his memory and get him back to the world he came from. Their mission becomes urgent when Jon’s ability to read minds is widely publicized by the media, ultimately coming to the attention of government agencies which recognize just how useful the boy could be for intelligence purposes.
Although it was originally published in 1965, only recently did I became aware of this novel for children. When I was a kid, readers� advisory was not a service commonly offered by children’s and school librarians. They mainly ordered and shelved books and reminded you to keep quiet. If any adults knew of this novel back then, they unfortunately didn’t share that information with me. I’m glad to report that the novel has withstood the test of time. Yes, there are a few mentions of Jon’s “Indian� or “gypsy� appearance, which might get some present-day, zealous, politically correct library-book-purgers worked up—I’m well aware of Ontario teacher-librarians weeding excellent children’s literature, even classics, for even slighter reasons—but I see nothing in the book to warrant its removal from shelves. Considering a book within its historical context strikes me as a better approach than the removal or outright banning of it. Why throw a lovely baby (with a birthmark or two) out with the bath water?
This is a delightful and insightful book that illuminates and critiques some of the very big problems with human beings. Some might argue that the good characters are too thoroughly good and the bad, too entirely bad, but that’s the case with fairytales, which have also endured over time. This is an enjoyable, fast-paced, accessible little novel for kids and, in my opinion, it’s well worth reading....more
This brief well-written middle-grade novel focuses on 13-year-old Kiri, an indigenous girl. At age 5, when her parents do not return to the family tenThis brief well-written middle-grade novel focuses on 13-year-old Kiri, an indigenous girl. At age 5, when her parents do not return to the family tent during a snowstorm, she is brought to a village by a couple (from another aboriginal group) who have happened upon her while out hunting. From early childhood, Kiri has had the ability to enter into the bodies of animals and view the world through their eyes. She can also pick up on the emotions of other humans. In her new home, she is adopted by an elderly “singer�/healer/shaman, Mali, to whom she becomes deeply attached. He trains her in healing practices and in the use of herbs.
Over the eight years Kiri has been with him, Mali has grown weak, and now there is talk among the elders of sending the girl out on her vision quest at an unusual time of the year—early winter. The tribe cannot function without a healer, and it is essential that there is someone to take on the role when Mali dies. Within this tribe, the vision quest is intended to reveal to the young person his or her true name and calling. Kiri knows she possesses the requisite gifts to be a healer. She’s sensitive to voices on the wind, for example, and she strongly senses the pain of others. However, she fears the suffering that overtakes her when she is near sick people, and she resists her fate. Mali makes clear that it is Kiri's responsibility to leave on the quest that will usher her into adulthood. Out of love for him, she leaves, travelling far from her familiar surroundings, as he has counselled her to do. On her journey, she has mysterious dreams in which voices call her name across a wide lake. She also endures a number of physical challenges (view spoiler)[ including the capsizing and wreck of her canoe and winter storms (hide spoiler)]. After healing an injured “wolken”—wolf�(all the animal species in the story are given fantastical names), Kiri and the wild canid become friends. In fact, “Cloud Shadow�, as she calls him, becomes her spirit animal, guarding her and the makeshift “wellan”—wigwam—she’s created. He brings her small animals for food and sleeps beside her. The climax of the novel turns on Kiri’s interaction with a village boy a year older than she. Kiri has always been wary of Garen. A dark cloud seems to hang over his head, and Kiri senses something frightening and disturbing within him that drives him to act with cruelty. Like her, he is resistant to hearing his true name and calling, and, since his first vision quest was unsuccessful, he is sent out on a second at the same time Kiri is.
Rather than write an anthropologically accurate novel, Root has opted for a safer fantasy approach. There’s nothing particularly magical about the plot elements; it’s in the naming of animals that Root signals that even though this appears to be our world, it isn’t quite. I honestly found the odd names for recognizable animals distracting and irritating. Root does provide a glossary, however, for readers who might have trouble keeping track.
This is a nice little novel and it includes some effective black-and-white illustrations by Dennis McDermott, which help young readers to better envision the setting. Characterization is not a strong point, and there are gaps in people’s backstories. Kiri recalls that she and her parents were once part of a village, but for some unknown reason the family is living in a tent well away from their tribe at the time of her father and mother’s disappearance. How Garen came to be alone and troubled is also a mystery. Having said all that, I still enjoyed the novel and believe kids would, too.
While not a literary novel, this is an entertaining, undemanding old-fashioned work of fiction with gothic elements and a tidily resolved plot. RatingWhile not a literary novel, this is an entertaining, undemanding old-fashioned work of fiction with gothic elements and a tidily resolved plot. Rating: 3.5...more
“It bewildered and dismayed her that she could not control this compulsion to dig up her family’s history at the same time she wanted to bury her own.“It bewildered and dismayed her that she could not control this compulsion to dig up her family’s history at the same time she wanted to bury her own. She’d simply have to get past the cranky bears waking up from hibernation and find a way into the dens they protected.�
Dawydiak’s novel, set in Toronto and Northern Ontario in 1978, focuses on an immigrant Ukrainian-Canadian extended family. It opens with 22-year-old Luba on a long bus-ride north with her widowed mother, Volya, who has just collected her from a psych ward in Toronto. Luba, a pre-med student at the U of T, impulsively attempted suicide after a break-up and is on her way home to Copper Creek to sort herself out on the proviso that she see a mental health counsellor. Luba’s relationship with her mother, “the dragon lady,� is strained and combative. Volya is rigid and controlling. Born in the mid 1920s, her earliest years in Ukraine were marked by poverty, fear, and sadness; her teens were shattered by the Nazi occupation. Given the trauma she has experienced, she’s frustrated by the laziness and selfishness of her Canadian daughter. She loves the girl intensely but is unable to communicate this, except (in the typical Ukrainian way) through feeding her. Perhaps the only thing the two can agree on at this point is that Luba’s “accident� is not to become fodder for family gossip. Like all unpleasant things, it will not be discussed but buried.
Not long after Luba’s return home, a cousin dies tragically. The extended family from around Ontario gather in Copper Creek for the funeral. Over a period of a few days, Luba witnesses some nasty fireworks between several relatives, a few of whom drink heavily. She’s particularly struck by the sniping between her mother and Aunt Zenia, Volya’s sister, and she is compelled to find out what has fuelled the siblings� animosity over the years. Luba has an opportunity to probe members of the Toronto branch of the family when Zenia invites her to the city for reasons that are not clear. While there, the young woman visits her ailing grandmother in a nursing home. Baba Sylana’s mental faculties are failing; only occasionally is she lucid and present. During one visit that Luba and her cousin Greg make to the seniors� home, Baba drops a bombshell, which the cousins have good reason to believe is true. The information makes Luba regard her mother and herself in a different light. Aunt Zenia also makes an unexpected disclosure about the young woman’s dead father, and a further revelation comes later from Volya herself, the final piece of the puzzle.
Although Luba is the protagonist of the novel, the author spends almost equal time on Volya’s backstory. There are flashbacks to a childhood with a brutish, alcoholic father; to her experiences as a forced labourer on a German farm during World War II; and to the years working at a textile factory in England after time in a displaced persons camp. These segments feel true and make for more compelling reading than Luba’s coming of age and her tiresome complaints about her exacting mother. Difficult she may be, but Volya is the more interesting and sympathetic character by a long shot.
The sections concerning Luba’s identity issues and time of discovery in Toronto make this more young adult than adult fiction. In the city, Luba hangs out a fair bit with her cousin, Zenia's son Greg, a lawyer with a social conscience, who happens to be gay, something that shames his traditional and status-conscious mother. Greg takes his younger cousin along with him to pubs and parties, where she meets his friends and is introduced to the alternative-lifestyle scene. Confused and impressionable, Luba consequently begins to question her own sexual orientation. I suspect the author included these incidents to provide a contrast with the restrictive social and sexual norms within the Ukrainian community of the 70s, but they felt forced and heavy handed. They also ended up forming a larger part of the novel than I expected or appreciated. I could have done without them.
This is not a literary work. The writing is serviceable but not much more than that. However, it is a book that portrays, with authenticity, aspects of the Eastern European immigrant experience. Dawydiak’s presentation of Ukrainian-Canadian culture and attitudes (of a particular time)—the social conservatism, rigidity and misogyny, the heavy drinking, racial intolerance and antisemitism—is often less than flattering. Even Ukrainian wartime collaboration with the Nazis is mentioned. For the most part, I was impressed by the author’s refusal to whitewash some of the more disturbing aspects of Ukrainian history and culture, but I was skeptical about Dawydiak’s forgiving treatment of the wartime experiences of one of Luba’s uncles. (view spoiler)[ The author writes of his recruitment into the German army as an 18-year-old, suggesting that he rounded up Jews in Italy only under duress. He was told that if he did not carry out orders, his mother and sisters would be harmed and he’d be beaten. Whether or not such tactics were actually used on Ukrainians in the German army or the author has softened disturbing realities about Ukrainian involvement in the Holocaust I cannot say. (Some years back, a French Catholic priest, Father Patric Desbois, heard and recorded the testimonies of elderly Ukrainians who’d been forced as terrified young people to carry out dirty work for the Nazis. For years they’d been weighed down by guilt over their participation; so it may be that Dawydiak’s telling and nuance are justified.) One thing I do know for certain is that a number of Nazi war criminals of Ukrainian descent settled in Canada without ever being held to account. (hide spoiler)]
Though Canada is home to the second largest Ukrainian diaspora (only Russia has more), this is one of the few novels I know that addresses the experience of this population. In spite of some faults—including a few too many tidy coincidences and dream sequences—I mostly found House of Bears an interesting and absorbing read....more
William is a tall, knobbly, introverted teenager. On his way home from school one afternoon, he observes a beautiful blonde long-haired girl seated onWilliam is a tall, knobbly, introverted teenager. On his way home from school one afternoon, he observes a beautiful blonde long-haired girl seated on a park bench. She’s reading a thin book, which has to be poetry. William is smitten, and, keeping his distance, he follows her home. Every day after school for the next three weeks, he stands across the road from the girl's house, gazing up at her window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. His model for chaste, idealized love is the poet Petrarch, who saw his muse, Laura, only once. Apparently that was enough for a lifetime. Daz, William’s exuberant younger sister, urges him to “get real�, do some detective work, find out who the mystery girl is, and meet her. (view spoiler)[ Little does William know, the girl, Karen Leonard, is an athletic sort, and she was reading a netball guide, not poetry. A sign on her bedroom door reads “Nuke ’em with Netball,� and her walls are plastered with sports posters. (hide spoiler)]
Daz is as far away from “getting real� as her brother. She’s heard a rumour about a fellow high-school student, the striking, blond-haired, Greek-god-of a boy, Valentine O’Leary—whom most know to be an obnoxious, narcissistic cad, who goes through girls at breakneck speed, tossing each away after a single use. The story is that Valentine did something wonderfully thoughtful, profoundly kind, and achingly tender to please his mother. Daz is so moved by the story that she’s revised her former prejudice and fallen in love with him. Valentine has hidden depths! Problem is: he has no idea who she is. When he catches her looking at him in geography class, however, he can’t resist giving her the Valentine “Special�, the intense vulnerable look he regularly practises at the bathroom mirror. (view spoiler)[Daz will come to her senses when she sees how horrified both her brother and her friend are upon learning who the object of her passion actually is. Her friend Joanna tells her the story about Valentine has no basis in reality. It was concocted by a humiliated girl who knew just how much it would get his goat. (hide spoiler)]
The third significant character in Clarke’s short novel is William and Daz’s grandmother, seventy-nine-year-old Sheila Thredlow, who lives in Sunset Rest Home. She too suffers delusions, but hers are due to dementia. Clarke brilliantly creates Mrs. Thredlow’s cognitive impairment. At times the elderly woman’s confused notions and her exchanges with another of the residents of the old folks home add humour to the story, but her condition is so delicately rendered that there is much poignancy as well. Mrs. Thredlow may not know anything about where she is and how she got there, but she does remember her beloved brother, Viv, killed in World War II, and the “friend of her heart�, Bonnie Lewis, who had loved Viv dearly. Sadly, before his death, Viv had been so busy pursuing his ideal girl—the “wrong type”—that he failed to recognize Bonnie’s feelings for him. Now, in old age, Mrs. Thredlow seems to be in distress about the friend of her heart. Her granddaughter is determined to do some detective work to find Bonnie.
Through her characters, especially Mrs. Sheila Thredlow, Clarke suggests that it is the friends of our heart that stay with us. In obsessively focussing on our delusional “ideal�, we may be missing out on the life-enriching love that is available to us.
I’m afraid that this book, given its age (it was first published in 1994) and its thin plot, may not engage many in its target young adult audience, but I enjoyed it immensely....more
I lost patience at the one-quarter point of this bloated almost 800-page doorstopper. Endless inconsequential details that add nothing to, and in factI lost patience at the one-quarter point of this bloated almost 800-page doorstopper. Endless inconsequential details that add nothing to, and in fact diminish, what might have been a decent work of historical fiction were it a fraction of the length. Do I really care to read utterly tedious descriptions of the heart-attack-inducing food the characters eat, what they wear to some meaningless party, the back and forth of stupid conversations in college dorm rooms, and teenage sex? I do not. This is an awful book. I don’t care what Oprah or anyone else says. This overly long and often tryingly dull novel is a testimony to the paucity of discriminating editors in the book industry....more
MacIntyre’s most recent novel is an odd one, and the problems start with the title, which seems increasingly peculiar as the narrative develops. The bMacIntyre’s most recent novel is an odd one, and the problems start with the title, which seems increasingly peculiar as the narrative develops. The book focuses far less on the Winter sisters—Peggy and Annie—the “wives� of the title (who remain shadowy, flat characters throughout) than on the unlikely friendship between the men they marry. Byron, the narrator of the story, is an introverted rural Nova Scotian who attended high school with the sisters. He has a history of mostly buried emotional trauma and a physical handicap acquired as a result of a serious accident in childhood. His given name is Angus, but in high school Peggy nicknamed him for the Romantic poet because, like Byron, he limped. The moniker stuck. Though he marries the calm, practical Annie, the alluring Peggy is the one he carries a torch for. He assumes she’s just out of his league. When the two are at university, at Peggy’s request, Byron introduces her to his new friend, the handsome, charismatic Allan Chase, a gifted athlete from Toronto. (Allan had struck up a conversation with Byron one evening as the two waited for the dining hall to open, and the young men subsequently became inseparable, leading some to speculate they were gay.) Peggy eventually marries Allan for reasons that are never clear.
At the time of their casual first meeting, Allan leads Byron to believe that he’s attending the East Coast university on a football scholarship. As the story unfolds, we learn there are lot of other things Allan leads Byron—and any number of others—to believe. It becomes clear to the reader, if not to the rather dim Byron, that Allan is not who he says he is. He’s a shifty character who lacks a moral compass and thrives on risk. When Allan drops out of university to go on the road as a trucker, Byron, who’s determined to attend law school, keeps in touch, even visiting his pal in Toronto and observing one of Allan’s drug deliveries play out. Allan tells Byron that about 99% of the cargo he carries by truck is legal; the other 1%, not so much. Byron, who plays life cautiously, is relatively untroubled by his friend’s “business� activities. As he pursues a law degree, enters the legal profession, and deals with his widowed mother who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he has little time to keep track of Allan’s activities. A visit to Florida is clarifying, however: Allan appears to have entered the criminal big leagues, dealing with cartels and distributing illicit drugs across North America. He’s got the fancy digs and an art collection to prove he’s made it. He turns to real estate—actually a cover for some heavy-duty money laundering. Both the Winter sisters, who have become accountants, end up working for him. After seeing his law career falter, Byron also joins Allan’s company. In fact, he’s named CEO and manages the legal aspects of the business, serving as signatory to deals whose details he chooses not to understand. Allan has indicated to that he wants his own name kept off the record, telling Byron: “I want you to be me.� Byron happily obliges. He’s always wanted to be Allan or someone like him.
We wouldn’t have a novel, though, if trouble wasn’t brewing. At one point, the police start sniffing around, interested in a particular client and real estate transaction that Byron signed off on. He manages to put the cops off for a while, but his control of matters is limited when Allan has a serious stroke on the golf course and is found to have vascular dementia. There’s a lot that Allan has kept to himself; none of his three friends know the extent of his operations.
All of this provides quite a fascinating premise for a novel, and I found the book’s first two-thirds quite absorbing. However, it’s my impression that the author set up a situation he was unable to satisfactorily resolve. There’s a long stretch in the novel where no one seems to be who he represents himself to be. Add to this confusion yet another factor MacIntyre throws into the mix—that is, that Byron himself may have inherited early-onset Alzheimer’s from his mother. In the end, it all became a bit much for me, and I was unconvinced by the conclusion, which seemed ridiculously pat and underwhelming.
MacIntyre is a well-known Canadian investigative journalist who turned to novel writing in retirement. He received the prestigious Giller Prize for an earlier work of literary fiction, which I’ve not read. In fact, this is the first of his many novels I’ve got to, so I’m unable to say how it measures up to the works that came before. What I can state is that I was disappointed by this novel. The Winter Wives certainly had potential but it lacked the quality I had expected from MacIntyre.
I wish to thank the publisher and Net Galley for providing me with a digital copy of the novel for review purposes.
In her new (fourth) novel, Canadian writer Zoe Whittall explores matters of female autonomy, self-actualization, sexuality/sexual identity, and motherIn her new (fourth) novel, Canadian writer Zoe Whittall explores matters of female autonomy, self-actualization, sexuality/sexual identity, and motherhood. She presents the story from the first-person point of view of three related women: Melissa (“Missy�) Wood; her mother Carola; and Missy’s paternal grandmother, Ruth. The novel opens in 1997, but moves backwards and forwards in time. We’re introduced to the main character, twenty-one-year-old Missy first, as she goes from one women’s health clinic to the next, demanding a tubal ligation. She wants the same sexual freedom as the men in the indie band she’s about to tour the US with. Missy has a lover in almost every major city, she has no appetite for commitment to anyone but herself, and zero interest in becoming a mother. At every clinic, she’s rejected for the sterilization surgery because of her age. She could change her mind, say all the doctors.
In the subsequent chapters that concern her, we learn of her wildly hedonistic life on the road with the guys. These sections are full of graphic descriptions of sexual encounters and drug use, with a fair number of other sordid details to boot. Though I understood that Whittall was likely wanting to contrast attitudes of women who came of age at different times, I found little to like or interest me in Missy from the get-go and I liked the explicit sex scenes even less. These were possibly informed by the author’s generation’s exposure to online porn. I considered bailing on the novel, but persisted to see if Whittall would move on from that material when providing the perspectives of the older women. I was relieved and more interested in the book when she did. Still, that couldn’t ultimately redeem this novel for me.
The story itself seemed to have a certain potential: Missy grew up on a Vermont commune, an “intentional community� called Sunflower, founded by her mother, father, and another couple. When we get Missy’s mother’s perspective, we learn that Carola felt intense ambivalence about motherhood practically from the moment she conceived her daughter. Although she feared she’d made a serious error, she managed to suppress the anxiety, dutifully playing the role of mother for more than a decade. (She ferried her daughter and another girl on the commune to town for mainstream medical care, even having the children secretly vaccinated.) However, her sense of constriction and unease only grew over the years. When her child was about to enter grade eight, Carola left the commune without notice, ultimately landing at a New Hampshire ashram, determined to live a life of service that would help her “find herself� and provide expiation. Carola’s narrative explores not only the troubles at the ashram (view spoiler)[including a now almost cliché story of a guru who sexually exploits his followers (hide spoiler)] but also the challenges of her own childhood and youth. Elderly Ruth’s story is one of displacement and marital unhappiness. Born to well-to-do British parents in Turkey, Ruth and her family fled Smyrna when war broke out in the early 1920s and the Anatolian city burned. In the 1950s, Ruth and her husband, Frank, ended up in Montreal, with Frank’s mistress installed just down the street.
For me Missy, who is clearly at the centre of this novel, is its weakest link. In the last third of the book, set over fifteen years after the earlier sections, Missy has undergone a major, inexplicable transformation. (view spoiler)[First of all, she has married. The reader is given no clue as to how this came about. But even more surprisingly, she’s moved from full rejection of motherhood to an almost irrational compulsion to reproduce in her late thirties. What does remain consistent is that she’ll have sex with anyone to make this happen—even an Uber driver. (hide spoiler)] There’s a ton of gender ideology nonsense in this last bit, including a character met at a bar who uses the third person plural pronoun. (view spoiler)[I refuse to buy into the madness of crowds and the current delusional thinking and refer to any single person as “they� and “them�. This is the first book I’ve read that appears to expect me to do this. (hide spoiler)] Whittall’s writing, which is initially hardly “spectacular� early on, is at least serviceable. At the end, it reads� at both the syntax and content levels� like something thrown together by a teenager in a writers� workshop.
I went into the book knowing nothing about Whittall, other than that she gained some celebrity in Canada at the time her third novel came out. I often go into a novel cold, knowing little about the plot and usually disregarding the blurbs. Sometimes, though, readers should pay attention to who writes those blurbs. I know I ought to have this time around. Seeing Torrey Peter’s glowing praise on the cover should have cinched it for me. The vulgar epigraphs and the dedication were further warnings that I failed to heed. I can’t imagine anyone thinking this was a good book.
A surprising book to appear on a Booker long list, this novel isn’t quite literary fiction. Set in 1972, it mostly concerns the friendship Rating: 2.5
A surprising book to appear on a Booker long list, this novel isn’t quite literary fiction. Set in 1972, it mostly concerns the friendship of a recently divorced 35-year-old Toronto accountant, the introverted Liam, new to the (fictional) northern-Ontario town of Solace, and a seven-year-old girl, Clara, whose teenage sister, Rose, has run away from home and is thought to be in danger in Toronto. Liam is in Solace because he inherited the house of Clara’s elderly neighbour, Mrs. Elizabeth Orchard. Clara has been caring for the widow’s cat, Moses, unaware that his owner has died of heart failure in hospital. Looking after Moses has been Clara’s only distraction from her worry and grief over her missing sister. It doesn’t take too long before the emotionally wounded Liam and the distressed girl meet. It is, of course, a meeting that will change both of them. Yes, it is that sort of book.
Over thirty years before, Elizabeth and her husband Charles, themselves childless, had taken Liam in for a time. The boy’s mother, who had never properly bonded with him, was overwhelmed by caring for her four other children (all girls, two sets of twins). When Liam’s family had moved into the neighbourhood, Elizabeth was psychologically fragile, having suffered several miscarriages. Her husband had been concerned—for good reason� about her having become too attached to another woman’s child. (view spoiler)[She ended up abducting the boy from his bed at night and driving around the countryside for the better part of the next 24 hours until being pulled over and charged by police. She would ultimately spend a year in a Toronto reformatory for women. (hide spoiler)]
While the past is a significant part of Elizabeth’s story. Lawson’s plot is propelled forward by two questions: (1) Will Rose be found alive, ending her family’s, and especially Clara’s, terrible distress? (2) Will Liam stay in Solace? His original plan, after all, had been to come there only to lick his wounds and to sell Elizabeth Orchard’s house.
Lawson employs three points of view: Clara’s, Liam’s, and Elizabeth’s. To my mind, the chapters from the third-person points of view of the child and the man are the most successful. By contrast, the first-person “Elizabeth� chapters, in which the elderly woman engages in an extended internal monologue directed at her dead husband, whom she believes she will be joining soon, are a bit too sentimental. Charles is regularly addressed, not by name but by such terms of endearment as “my love� and “dear one�. I don’t think this authorial decision worked well to convey the couple’s obviously complex marital history.
In an afterward, Lawson thanks people who provided her with details about policing and home building in 1970s northern Ontario. While the author seems to have got those details right, the fact that she has not lived in Ontario for years and years (but in the UK) shows in her word choice. Ontarians don’t have “rows�; they have fights or arguments. Cigarettes are not “fags� in Canada; in the 1970s (and even now) this was/is a derogatory term for gay men. Finally, doctors who train longer to gain expertise and board certification in a particular medical field are known here as “specialists� not “consultants�. While I’m at it, I’ll also add that Mrs. Orchard’s long drive with the abducted Liam was a little hard to credit. Many people did not own cars in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and women did not commonly drive during those decades. (As some of Alice Munro’s early stories show, horses were still being used for heavy labour on farms even after the war.)
I enjoyed this novel enough to complete it. It’s readable, undemanding, and warm. I particularly appreciated the depiction of Clara, which felt true. The adults? I had a little more trouble buying into their dilemmas. Complexity and nuance are lacking....more
On an intellectual level I was well aware of Sorrow and Bliss’s imperfections, but I still loved this immersive novel that focuses on mental illness aOn an intellectual level I was well aware of Sorrow and Bliss’s imperfections, but I still loved this immersive novel that focuses on mental illness and love. Initially clever and witty, it moves into uncomfortable territory about marital breakdown and becomes quite wrenching and painful. Perhaps the conclusion is too hopeful, but I wanted that ending and gladly accepted it....more
In this sensitively written novel, Noel Streatfeild ostensibly explores the impact of World War II on an upper-middle-class London family. Really, thoIn this sensitively written novel, Noel Streatfeild ostensibly explores the impact of World War II on an upper-middle-class London family. Really, though, it’s a consideration of the experience of four children who must cope after their beloved, steady father, Alex, is killed by a bomb during the Blitz. The Wiltshire kids are left in the care—if you can call it that—of their pretty and narcissistic mother, Lena, (view spoiler)[who turns to alcohol and attempts to fill her emotional and sexual void with an American soldier (hide spoiler)]. Not surprisingly, there’s considerable fallout. Lena is oblivious of her children’s needs and struggles; she’s too preoccupied with her own. Alex’s parents and four sisters step in to fill the gaps. The latter divide up care for the children over their summer holidays from boarding school when Lena spirals out of control and later when she marries an unlikeable, domineering man.
A longer novel, Saplings, with its well-drawn child characters and insightful treatment of wartime upheaval and parental loss, held my interest throughout. However, the final quarter of the novel loses focus as the family breaks apart, and the book’s conclusion struck me as abrupt. Interestingly, aside from the children’s former governess, Ruth Glover, and their nanny, the men are far more sympathetically drawn and more attuned to the children’s needs than the women. Alex’s sister, Lyndsey, a novelist, is a particularly unpleasant creation. In the end, although it’s an imperfectly realized novel, it is mostly an interesting and absorbing one. ...more
A gritty story set in a rough area of Dublin, Boys Don’t Cry had potential but ultimately didn’t quite deliver. It’s tricky business for an authorA gritty story set in a rough area of Dublin, Boys Don’t Cry had potential but ultimately didn’t quite deliver. It’s tricky business for an author to create a credible child cancer patient, and Scarlett mostly succeeds with 12-year-old Finn, but I found that the novel’s end edged too close to maudlin. Furthermore, a critical scene late in the book—involving the boy’s elder brother and protector, Joe, who is hovering on the precipice of a life of crime—is sketched in strokes too scant. It left me confused as to what had actually occurred, apart from knowing that someone was dead.
This was a book I wanted to like . . . but couldn’t. Having said this, I’m aware from reviews here and elsewhere that many others take a different view....more
Even though Seven is overly long, quite “chick-litty�, and characterized by a fair bit of Hindi and Arabic vocabulary, it’s a readable novel. It fEven though Seven is overly long, quite “chick-litty�, and characterized by a fair bit of Hindi and Arabic vocabulary, it’s a readable novel. It focuses on the practice of khatna (female circumcision/genital mutilation) in the Dawoodi Bohra community, a sect of Shia Islam, about which I admit to having known nothing before reading Farzana Doctor’s book. Khatna is typically performed on female children when they are seven years old. It is said to maintain girls� “purity� and reduce the likelihood of their acting out sexually. Some who undergo the procedure experience no diminishment in feeling, but for others there is nerve damage, causing loss of normal sensation or even significant pain. Trauma is not uncommon. Girls are usually not told what is being done to them. Afterwards, they are instructed not to discuss what they’ve been through.
Set in 2015, the novel centres on Sharifa, a 40-year-old New Yorker, who in childhood immigrated to the U.S. with her parents. Now, years later, she’s burnt out from fifteen years as a high-school history teacher. She resigns from her job in order to travel with her Canadian-born Bohra husband, Murtuza, and their seven-year-old daughter, Zee, to Mumbai. Murtuza will be teaching a course while on sabbatical there. Sharifa’s affluent Indian cousins have arranged luxurious accommodations for her family’s eight-month stay.
Before Sharifa leaves the U.S., her recently widowed mother encourages her to put her training as a historian to use in India by doing some research on the family patriarch, Abdoolally Seth, her great-great-grandfather. When Abdoolally was a child, he and his mother, Amtabai, left Dholka, their small Gujarati village, to make their way in Mumbai. Amtabai’s instincts were good ones: Abdoolally’s would be the quintessential rags-to-riches story. He started as an illiterate boy in servitude to others and became an extremely wealthy and influential businessman—and one with a conscience to boot. He bequeathed two-thirds of his riches to charity for the establishment of Bohra schools and a maternity hospital in his home village. The first two of the patriarch’s young wives had died in childbirth; his losing them left a permanent mark. He married his fourth wife, the homely widow of a loyal employee, as a good deed. However, it’s the third wife, Zehra, who captures Sharifa’s imagination. For some mysterious reason, Abdoolally divorced the young woman after only two years of marriage, something almost unheard of in the Bohra community of the early twentieth century. Sharifa aims to get to the bottom of Zehra’s story, and, indeed, by the end of the book, she does.
Once in India, Sharifa spends lots of time with her cousins, Zainab and Fatema. The three, who are the same age, had been inseparable as children. Fatema is a wealthy businesswoman who owns a successful publishing house. She’s also a committed feminist and social activist, critical of the corruption and misogyny in the Bohra community, and particularly angry about khatna. This is a practice decreed by the male leaders of the sect, but enforced and carried out by its women. Fatema collects and posts the stories of khatna survivors on her Facebook page, but she, too, has been personally touched and harmed by the rite. She challenges Sharifa to think about what she’d rather avoid and makes some shocking disclosures. (view spoiler)[Fatema reveals that when they were seven, the girls� Aunt Tasnim took all three of them—including Sharifa, who was visiting for the summer—to be “cut�. The act was carried out in violation of Sharifa’s mother’s stated instructions. Zainab suffered only minimally, but both Fatema and Sharifa experienced nerve injury and lost normal sensation. While Fatema has clear recall of that day 33 years before, the event was so traumatic for Sharifa that she buried all memory of it. She initially reacts to Fatema’s words by denying the harm that was done to her and the degree the procedure has affected her life. Ultimately, however, she realizes there’s a physical reason for her inability to derive pleasure from her intimate relations. She is terrified to leave her seven-year-old daughter alone with the once-favourite aunt who robbed her of something so significant. (hide spoiler)]
Seven is an interesting novel, rich in anthropological detail about a community I suspect many Westerners are unaware of. The content highlights the importance of halting a barbaric, inhumane practice. I believe this book, like so many other contemporary works of fiction, would have benefited from a rigorous slimming down by at least a third. Sometimes less really is more. The reader doesn’t need to know the menu for every meal, nor the subject matter for every home-schooled lesson Sharifa delivers to Zee while they’re in India. Furthermore, the author seems a lot more interested in detailing aspects of Sharifa and Murtuza’s sex life—including the Fifty-Shades-of-Grey elements—than I was in reading about them. The details are remarkable only for their utter tediousness. They fail to compensate for an often bland, disappointingly passive, and occasionally dim-witted protagonist. (view spoiler)[To wit: in spite of her awareness of the menace Aunt Tasnim poses, Sharifa does not anticipate the woman’s sneakiness—her way of getting at Zee through Zee’s teenage cousin, Nafeesa. (hide spoiler)] However, just when I was losing all faith in Sharifa, she surprised me by quite courageously (for her) confronting the member of her family who’d betrayed her. The novel’s epilogue is also strong. The heartwarming elements of the women buying matching Indian clothes I could have done without.
Thank you to Farzana Doctor, who herself endured khatna, and to Library Thing Early Reviewers program for kindly providing me with a hard copy of the book.
I devoured Rosoff’s brisk and compelling young adult novel in just a little more than one sitting. Narrated in crisp, snappy prose by an unnamed sevenI devoured Rosoff’s brisk and compelling young adult novel in just a little more than one sitting. Narrated in crisp, snappy prose by an unnamed seventeen-year-old girl, it concerns a family’s annual six-week holiday at their English seaside summer house. Along with the narrator’s parents are her well-drawn siblings, the beautiful sixteen-year-old Mattie, fully aware of her sexual allure; the horse-crazy Tamsin, and their younger brother, Alex, a nature detective, who’s particularly keen on bats. Just down the beach a little is another summer house, occupied by their dad’s much younger cousin, Hope, and her witty and attractive actor boyfriend of twelve years, Mal. These two met in drama school, and the big announcement to start the holiday is that they will marry at the end of the summer.
However, this season by the sea will be quite different from past ones for more reasons than the upcoming nuptials. Hope announces that her godmother’s teenage sons, Kit and Hugo, will also be joining them. Within three days of the news, Florence Godden, the boys� movie-star mother, pulls up in a chauffeured black Mercedes to drop them off. She’s off to shoot a Hungarian art-house film, and she’s requested that Hope take charge of the young men. The contrast between the brothers couldn’t be more remarkable: the godlike Kit, the elder of the two, appears to emit light; the dark, sullen Hugo, on the other hand, seems to absorb it.
Kit can (and does) charm the pants off anyone—literally. His first and easiest conquest is, of course, the stunning Mattie, whose every romantic fantasy seems to be fulfilled by him. The narrator is more leery. An aspiring artist and observer, she rightly assesses him as a player and initially resists his attentions, but even gut feelings and warnings from Hugo, with whom she forms a friendship, aren’t enough to arm her against Kit’s sociopathic charisma. One reads compulsively to discover just how wide his path of destruction will be. Very wide, it turns out.
I’ve known Meg Rosoff’s name for years, but this is the first of her novels I’ve read. While it is not sexually graphic, the novel’s content and themes make it more suitable for mature young adults. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a novel, certainly not a young adult one, that explores sociopathy so well.
Thank you to Candlewick for providing me with an advance review copy of this book....more
Set in the rural south of Ireland, partly in 1919 during the early days of the Irish War of Independence and partly in 2019 (a full hundred years lateSet in the rural south of Ireland, partly in 1919 during the early days of the Irish War of Independence and partly in 2019 (a full hundred years later), O’Mahony’s novel initially masquerades as a mix of family saga, historical, and psychological fiction. It is soon enough revealed to be a combination of mildly cheesy historical romance and unconvincing mid-life-crisis narrative about a woman with infertility and marital problems.
The novel opens in 1919, with the O’Donovan family in their farmhouse kitchen awaiting a group of young volunteer Irish “freedom fighters”—led by the dashing Padraic O’Riada—whom they have agreed to shelter from the Black and Tans*, constables of the Royal Irish Constabulary, most of whom have been recruited from England to suppress the IRA. Nineteen-year-old Hannah, the eldest O’Donovan daughter and her father’s favourite, is sympathetic to the cause and the likely reason he’s agreed to allow these fugitives into the house at all.
Once the men are ensconced in the secret attic room, it is Hannah who brings them their meal and tells them what to do when the Tans make an earlier-than-expected raid. On first encountering him, Hannah experiences a powerful attraction to the striking O’Riada. After the Tans� attack leaves the young woman roughed-up and bleeding and her father badly injured with multiple fractures and blind in one eye, she walks outside to meet O’Riada (view spoiler)[The two have a rapturous tumble in the grass; O’Riada makes promises to Hannah, which she clings to, especially after discovering—Surprise! Surprise!—that she is pregnant. Need I add that at that time a pregnancy out of wedlock usually meant an Irish woman was cast out of the family; she and her baby were often institutionalized apart from each other. The priests oversaw the whole operation. (hide spoiler)] There will be further trouble between O’Riada and the Tans on the O’Donovan farm, an armed conflict in which Hannah, an excellent shot, will play a pivotal role. She and the rest of the family will become the stuff of local legend.
For most of the book, chapters alternate between Hannah’s story (the better one by far, for what it’s worth) and that of Ellen, her 21st-century Irish-born descendent, a beauty columnist with a large British newspaper. Ellen lives in luxury in London with her wealthy, handsome, and increasingly distant husband, Simon. Now thirty-eight (twice Hannah’s age), Ellen has had several miscarriages and, recently, a stillbirth. When she’s not lamenting her lost youth and beauty, obsessing about her thick legs and clutching at her abdominal fat, she engages in interior moan-ologues about having had a Mammy who didn’t love her, no friends, and a mocking, disdainful husband. She alternates between histrionics—wanting “to run around the fields pulling her clothes off� in an act of defiance against the “tight little box of explaining herself to Simon”—and passivity: wishing she could just fade away into the earth. At first, I believed she was in Ireland to commit suicide, but, no, she’s apparently learned that the O’Donovan farm is on the market. She seems to be possessed of the odd notion that purchasing it, on her unloving husband’s dime, will restore her to psychological health. While staying at a hotel not far from the ancestral home, she does learn a fair bit about the O’Donovans from the locals, including a surprising secret that has personal relevance. (view spoiler)[Hannah is, in fact, her great-grandmother, not Eily—Hannah’s sister (hide spoiler)] On the whole, however, unlike the character herself, Ellen’s story is remarkably thin (view spoiler)[so thin, in fact, that the author resorts to adding some drama to it by submitting her protagonist to a ridiculously rendered scene of attempted rape by a real estate agent—after which Ellen drives back to the hotel in her voluminous black knickers. She’s less concerned about having been attacked than about a hotel employee seeing her large knickered bottom. Her husband and her mother appear to accept Ellen’s absurd explanation for her state of undress: she fell and her jeans are sopping wet and in the car’s trunk. (hide spoiler)]
In case you haven’t noticed, I didn’t get on with this book. The problems came thick and fast, starting on page 3, when Ellen notices, while driving, that her breasts are “sitting on the high mound of her stomach.� But wait; it gets worse: those breasts “begin nuzzling each other like little overfed animals.� I could go on, but I won’t.
I’m sure there are some great novels about Irish War of Independence, and I bet there are a few good ones about the stories old houses could tell. This, alas, is not one of them.
*It should be noted that O’Mahony has gotten her dates wrong. The Black and Tans began active duty in 1920, not 1919. I consulted multiple sources to confirm this. Here’s a brief section of an article that appeared in the Irish Times earlier this year:
The first Black and Tans arrived in March 1920 where they received cursory training at a depot in the Phoenix Park; subsequent recruits were trained at Gormanstown. There was a surge in recruitment later in 1920 as the British economy struggled, with more than 1,100 recruits joining the force in October 1920 alone. Eventually, over 8,000 of them were to serve in Ireland and most were sent to Cork, Tipperary, Galway, Clare, Limerick and Kerry.
I loathed this. I kept hoping it would transcend the trite. Maybe it does, but I couldn’t endure more than 47 pages. It was like reading Curtis SittenI loathed this. I kept hoping it would transcend the trite. Maybe it does, but I couldn’t endure more than 47 pages. It was like reading Curtis Sittenfeld, and, no, that’s not a compliment. ...more
Wetmore’s debut is a competent, accessible, and earnest novel, which initially centres around the brutal rape of Gloria Ramirez, a fourteen-year-old MWetmore’s debut is a competent, accessible, and earnest novel, which initially centres around the brutal rape of Gloria Ramirez, a fourteen-year-old Mexican-American girl, by an oil-rig worker only a few years older than she is. It circles back to Gloria in the end, but not before shifting focus to the effect of the rape on another woman, Mary Rose Whitehead, a twenty-six-year-old mother of two and the first person to see the young girl after she’s assaulted. In the end, the novelist’s larger goal is to provide, through fiction, an exposé of the hard lives of West Texas women and girls of the late 1970s/post-Vietnam War period, when the oil fields were increasingly productive. There are dangers all around Wetmore’s women—natural hazards: scorching heat, dust storms, twisters, scorpions, and rattle snakes; man-made sources of danger: fires at the chemical plants, gas leaks, and toxic spills. And then there are the distinctly human menaces: hard-drinking, violent, predatory men.
The novel provides the alternating perspectives of six females of different ages—two of them girls. These characters are distinct and well-drawn, and the setting (in the hate-filled, bigoted town of Odessa, Texas of 1976) is well-realized. Until its final quarter, the book moves at a fairly slow pace, reading more like a collection of meandering linked short stories than a novel. That’s not a bad thing; it’s just that for some time there seems to be no urgent question begging to be answered. Yes, a trial is to occur, but the outcome is predetermined. The rapist is from a “good� white family—he’s the son of a preacher, in fact—and he has the sympathy of most. The battered victim, viewed by the townsfolk as one of those wild, quick-to-mature Mexican girls, is not up to testifying, and her uncle won’t agree to her being further harmed by the courts. As for the star witness, Mary Rose, at whose ranch home Gloria seeks help after the assault—she’s a loose cannon. Worn down by weeks of threatening phone calls and worry over her children’s safety, the young mother does not make a good witness. After the trial, the narrative tension ramps up dramatically when a girl goes missing. Now unhinged, Mary Rose takes matters into her own hands . . . Need I mention she’s a good shot?
I was interested enough to finish the book, but I was not fully immersed in it. I could feel Wetmore’s presence a little too often, and while the author writes capably enough, there is nothing special about her prose. The book does capture Texas, the wild-west frontier mentality and the significant constraints and dangers women face in that state, but there are no startling insights into human nature or experience, nor is there much nuance. I don’t regret reading the book, but I’m not wowed enough to recommend it....more
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