Eriksson’s characters achingly genuine

 High Clear Bell of Morning

By Ann Eriksson

Douglas and McIntyre

256 pages, $22.95

Reviewed by Arleen Pare

Few books make me cry. So I was genuinely surprised when I found myself crying when I finished reading High Clear Bell of Morning.  To be honest, I cried half way through too — well, I had tears in my eyes.  Of course, this is a terrifyingly sad story about a family’s struggle to come to terms with the mental illness that overtakes their daughter, Ruby, just as she enters university.  Ruby, it turns out, has schizophrenia – a painful twist in any family’s life.

The reader witnesses the undoing of Ruby through the eyes of her sympathetic father, Glen, who tries over and over to save her from her decline into addictions and deprivation.  We are with him through his initial disbelief, through his slow realization that life will never be the same, through his desperation to save Ruby.  From his perspective, there is no reason why he can’t help her overcome her illness and return to being the Ruby she once was.

Part of Eriksson’s brilliance in this, her fourth novel, springs from her choice to tell this story from two points of view: Glen’s, with whom many readers will identify, and Ruby’s as well.  We sympathize with both.  Ruby has her own reasons to feel unsafe, even if those reasons are not reasonable.  She articulates them, describing her impossible situation.  She tries to manage the voices that interfere with her family life, university courses and friends.  Of course, she can’t.   And because Ruby describes the problems, the haunting seriousness of them, the reader begins to understand too.  Eriksson balances these two points of view, Glen’s and Ruby’s, with respect and considerable neutrality, which leaves the reader aching for Ruby and for the knot that has become the family, the conundrum at the heart of serious mental illness.

At the same time, whales are dying.  Glen is a marine biologist who studies killer whales in the Salish Sea.  He collects data that suggests toxic waste in the oceans off the west coast of Canada is endangering whale habitat and whale populations.  Glen has two problems: Ruby and the whales — and he believes they might be related.

Eriksson is a novelist and an ecologist.  Both interests serve to create this very fine book.  She details the lives of killer whales and their habitat, as well as the lives of their researchers, with convincing authority.  Her descriptions of mental illness and its effects are believable.

High Clear Bell of Morning is not overwritten; it is to the point. All the details — emotional, scientific, medical, social — are presented with a credible, eponymous clarity.  But it is Eriksson’s ability to draw character with care and compassion that most successfully sustains this novel.  That is what made me cry.

Arleen Pare is a Victoria writer; her new book of poetry, Lake of Two Mountains, is published by Brick Books.

5 Questions with Andrea Raine

Andrea Raine is a local Victoria author and University of Victoria alumna. She has participated in the Glenairley writing retreats led by Canadian writer Patrick Lane in Sooke, B.C. and has been attending the Planet Earth Poetry reading series since 1997. She published her first book of poetry, A Mother’s String, in 2005 through Ekstatis Editions and recently self-published her first novel, Turnstiles, through Inkwater Press. Recently, Nadia Grutter held an email conversation with Raine via email to discuss her writing experience.

1. First off, tell us a little about Turnstiles.

My novel, Turnstiles, is basically about three main characters who are struggling with inner demons, pushing the outside world away and yet, at the same time, wanting desperately to be a part of the bigger picture. They just need to come to terms with a few things first. Their chance (and relatively brief) meetings propel each of them in different directions, where they gain new perspectives on how to move forward. It is an empathetic and honest portrayal of human beings attempting to redefine themselves amidst the clash of idealism and societal expectations. It is a stirring, dramatic depiction of love, loss, impulse, and consequence.

2. Your first published work, A Mother’s String, is poetry. Turnstiles is fiction. Do you prefer writing in one genre over the other? How do they inform each other in the writing process?

I have been writing poetry longer than I’ve been writing novels. My poetic voice definitely influences my prose in how I paint a picture and play with language.

3. From what I understand, Turnstiles is self-published while A Mother’s String is not. How did the publishing processes differ?

A Mother’s String wasn’t necessarily self-published, but it was published through on demand by a small, local publisher Ekstasis Editions. I didn’t pay for the publishing and professional editing services, but I did need to pay for subsequent copies of my book at a discount price. It was entirely up to me to place my poetry book in bookstores on consignment, much like my novel Turnstiles. I published Turnstiles through a publishing package with Inkwater Press that included marketing assistance. So, my two publishing experiences are comparable.

4. Why did you chose to self-publish and would you do it again?

Initially, I tried to publish my novel, Turnstiles, through the traditional route by writing query letters and pitching to literary agencies. I received positive feedback, but there were other obstacles to landing a literary agent, i.e. my book didn’t fit their portfolio. I stumbled across Inkwater Press, an indie publisher, and was impressed with their mandate and services. Inkwater Press was eager to publish my first novel, and they have continued to be extremely helpful in marketing and setting up reading events. I am not opposed to self-publishing again because there is a large degree of freedom and control in the design concept. However, there is a price tag attached to self-publishing and for that reason I am going to first try traditional publishing again for my next book.

5. What advice would you give other authors looking to self-publish?

Self-publishing has its benefits, and is a good way to get your big toe into the book world. Still, authors who are self-publishing need to be savvy when it comes to marketing your book, keeping out-of-pocket costs down, and targeting an audience.

Author and artist collaborate beautifully

Correspondences

By Anne Michaels and Bernice Eisenstein

McClelland & Stewart

Unpaginated, $35

Reviewed by Karen Enns

            Correspondences is a deeply layered collaboration between poet and novelist Anne Michaels, and artist and writer Bernice Eisenstein (author of the graphic memoir “I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors”). It is a beauty of a book, seamlessly blending form and content in a unique design that invites the reader into a communal place of remembrance.

The pages open out accordion-style between two hardcover plates. Read one way, Michaels’ long resonant poem unfolds; read the other way, Eisenstein’s portraits of writers, musicians, and artists, whose lives were brutally altered by the Holocaust and the Stalinist purges, peer out at the reader from muted backgrounds. Opened out completely, the gallery of faces spans the length of a large room. Eisenstein’s subjects include Anna Akhmatova, Bruno Schulz, Albert Camus, Charlotte Salomon, Osip Mandelstam, Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, and many others. The haiku-like text that accompanies each portrait is often, though not always, a quotation. Opposite the face of Tereska, a young survivor whose photograph was taken in a refugee camp, and about whom little else is known, are the words, “I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are you – Nobody – Too?”

The end of one side of the book becomes the beginning of the other, pulling the reader into an endless loop of mourning. “Our eyes register the light of dead stars,” a quotation from the work of André Schwarz-Bart, speaks to the relentlessness of that pull; the haunting gazes in Eisenstein’s portraits are as hard to leave behind as they are to see again.

Michaels’s book-length poem begins in the dark, lyrical tone that carries the entire work: “The wet earth. I did not imagine / your death would reconcile me with / language, did not imagine soil / clinging to the page, black type / like birds on a stone sky.” There is deep grief in this elegy to her father and to the historical figures that shared his century. “A life is inextricable from a time, place, language,” she writes in one of the brief biographical notes that introduce the portraits, “If we seek it, if we are fortunate, our sensibilities and our grief find a true companionship — with certain writers, painters, composers, activists. To remember someone is also to remember this ardour, these allegiances, this necessity.”

The poem is a tribute to this ardour then, and to the ways in which language becomes a necessary part of its articulation, a connective tissue between the past and the present, between the mourned and those who mourn, and between the survivors themselves—the ones who have lived to tell the stories. Language, says Michaels, can either complete or dismantle us, “each word the reverse of a word.” Referring to the correspondence between Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan, who appear as central figures (indeed, their portraits act as bookends on either side of the gallery), she writes, “For both, language was a leap of faith, staggering and minimal . . . .”

But this book is an artistic collaboration. Two art forms in dialogue can do more than one. If language seems inadequate at times, if it can make the leap only minimally, we have the visual to intensify the palette: “not two to make one, / but two to make / the third, / just as a conversation can become / the third side of the page.”

The accordion-style format means the reader has to physically support the book to keep it together. It is this act that adds a final dimension to the experience of Correspondences. The reader must also bear some of the weight.

Karen Enns’s new book of poetry, Ordinary Hours, will be launched in Victoria April 29 at 7:30 p.m. at Open Space as part of a group tour sponsored by her publisher, Brick Books. The three other poets featured include Arleen Pare (Lake of Two Mountains), Jane Munro (Blue Sonoma) and Joanna Lilley (The Fleece Era).

Bond with land animates novel

Somewhere In-Between

By Donna Milner

Published by Caitlin Press

285 pages; $21.95

Reviewed by Cecania Alexander

Within the first few scenes of Somewhere In-Between, I was infatuated with the novel’s lyric poeticism,  intrigue and attention to beauty.  Milner tells a story of love, isolation, mystery and hope in which a married couple tries to move on by relocating to a ranch in rural B.C., after their daughter’s tragic death.

Milner has a gift –an unusually deep connection to nature – and this graces her writing, more than satisfying a reader thirsty for an inspiring, freshly painted setting. “Beautiful British Columbia” would blush in pride if it could read about itself. Milner’s connection to nature springs from her life in B.C., including her years living in West Kootenays,  the setting of her first two novels After River and The Promise of Rain.  Milner now lives near Williams Lake, which she admits was the inspiration for the isolated lake home in Somewhere In-Between.

The novel pulses with subtle intensity from the first scene till the last sentence. The story starts as Julie and Ian O’Dell tour an isolated home in rural B.C. They purchase the lakeside ranch despite the mysterious tenant, Virgil Blue, who comes with the land. The reader follows as they search for the shadow cast by ominous hints at some looming beast in their world, in their relationship. Soon we learn their daughter Darla’s death haunts their lives. And yet the mysterious feeling remains, connected to the land and Virgil Blue. He becomes oddly, unwillingly, involved in Julie and Ian’s search for redemption and forgiveness.

Milner braids two other sections, besides the real-time narration of Julie and Ian’s lives on the ranch, into the book. One is Virgil’s story – a slow unraveling of his life before he came to the ranch, his family history, and his connection to the O’Dells.  His is a chilling story, told with tactful objectivity; it operates as an engaging intermission for the main plot. The third thread is jarringly separate and begs the reader to suspend disbelief: it is a first-person account of the afterlife from Darla’s perspective.

Here Milner had me raising an eyebrow. Spirituality is bluntly presented, in the cliché of a spirit watching the world until an affair is in order: “There is no need to regret this goodbye . . . because as soon as I pass through I will meet them on the other side. It’s so easy to understand the truth about time having no meaning on our journey to love. In a single luminous flash, the light fills the universe before me . . .” This section also creates a few plot holes in the story and sways an already sentimental story.

By the end of the book, however, the compelling characters and the satisfying story overwhelmed my doubts. After turning the last page, I closed the book with affection, glad I picked it up in the first place. This is a beautiful adventure into the glory of B.C. and the grace of human love.

Cecania Alexander is a fourth-year creative writing student at the University of Victoria.

 

Novelist explores loss and identity

Victoria author Margaret Thompson’s new novel, The Cuckoo’s Child (Brindle and Glass) is a compelling exploration of a character’s loss of both son and brother, as well as her own sense of identity.  Overall, it’s a hopeful narrative about accepting life’s mysteries. Thompson says her initial idea for the novel sprang from a 1980s  news report about a kidnapped boy who had been missing for 12 years but then suddenly turned up at a police station.  She says her first draft “hibernated in a drawer for several years” until she “dusted it off” and did the final editing.  Thompson is the author of an award-winning young adult novel, short stories and two collections of personal essays.  She’s a past president of the Federation of BC Writers.  This month she will be reading April 15 at 7 p.m. as part of Russell Books “At The Mike” Fiction Night .  On May 23, she will give a 4 p.m. reading at Salt Spring Library.  Coastal Spectator Editor Lynne Van Luven and Thompson conducted the following conversation via e-mail just after The Cuckoo’s Child was published.

 It is always interesting to read novels by writers one knows because their invention of characters and creation of narrative are studded by facts and events in the public domain. What tactics do you deploy to balance all three?

Tactics sounds frighteningly intentional! I think the process has something to do with different compartments in the brain contributing to the mix. The characters come from the creative department; they are almost entirely inventions, though Magnus  owes a lot to a head gardener I once knew, and there are a few people who might find something familiar about the three Wimbledon ladies [from whom Livvy Alvarsson rents a room]. I think it’s essential to fabricate the characters because that is the only way to maintain any sort of control over them. Even then, they sometimes get away from you and insist on having their own way. It’s handy, though, to be able to slot them into some kind of framework, and that’s where facts from the information vault come in. The inclusion of fact—things like geography, architecture, the Second World War, the Thatcher era, and the hurricane which flattened 15,000,000 trees in the UK—lends reality, but also imposes limitations that may affect the narrative. The novel’s present, for instance, is the late 1980s; most people at the time had barely heard of computers and certainly didn’t possess their own; there was no Internet, no email, no social networking, so the kind of search Livvy undertakes would of necessity entail a journey and personal effort. The last element to include is memory—untrustworthy by definition, but essential for colour and warmth. I may not remember the exact dates of my visits to the estate I based Hescot Park on, but I can vividly remember every detail of the place and how it made me feel.

The Cuckoo’s Child is a compelling meld of family mystery and searing meditation upon loss. Can you talk about the impetus to combine those themes?

Like most undertakings, things started simply and got more complicated the more I thought about them. I think that long-ago news item about the kidnapped boy had planted the seed of loss, but it took a little jolt in my own life to bring the family mystery idea to the surface. I would have said my family history was boringly transparent until the day shortly after my father died when my mother said, à propos of nothing at all, “Of course, he had another wife before me.” Nothing sinister about that, but it drove home the truism that every family has its secrets! I already knew I wanted to explore loss—how would it be, I wondered, if I took away the family anchorage, too? What effect would that have on the sense of identity?

I notice that, as your novel’s setting ranges from Sechelt to Prince George to London to the English countryside, the narrative action moves naturally through geography once familiar to you. Did you have to revisit these sites or did you write solely from memory?

I had to do a bit of research on places like London and Brighton, but that was just for general topography rather than precise detail, and I wasn’t above taking liberties, either! Most of the details of the various settings came from my own memories.

I don’t want us to give away the novel’s conclusion but I do want to know if you struggled with keeping the ending credible without being sentimental. Can you comment on that?

Fiction rather encourages the inclination to play God, but I am no sentimentalist and I do distrust the pat ending. I wanted an ending that allows Livvy to embrace her future with confidence, but realism ensured that it wouldn’t turn out exactly as she hopes. Life just isn’t like that. So, I deliberately took away as I restored, and left loose ends, some that may turn out well, and others that will never be explained.

I loved Livvy’s dry, sharp comments about teaching that I deduce are drawn from your own experience. I find it interesting that Daniel’s disappearance finds its way into Neil’s art—that is, he is eventually able to externalize his pain at the loss of his son, while Livvy seems to have more difficulty in “dealing” with loss, hence her need to try and “save” Stephen. Can you talk a bit about how that came about in the narration?

Making Livvy a teacher was well nigh irresistible! And the staff meeting scene came from the heart; that Them/Us vibe was so much a flavour of the time during the 80s. As for the art, that arose from a need to turn up the narrative heat a bit. It’s another truism that everyone grieves in his or her own way; it stood to reason that Neil would not react in exactly the same way as Livvy and that his way could be alienating for someone who doesn’t share it. It’s also true that losing a child often puts a huge strain on the parents’ relationship. I didn’t want that rupture—I wasn’t looking to make Livvy a sort of female Job!— but having her run that risk and experience further drift and isolation seemed dramatically feasible. Neil’s art serves another purpose, too. Daniel himself sees it as his father’s way of keeping him alive, which suggests that even though Livvy’s literal attempt to save Stephen fails, there are other ways for her to preserve her brother.

Poems reverberate with isolation

Blue Sonoma

By Jane Munro

Brick Books,

79 pages $20

 

 

Reviewed by Yvonne Blomer

           

            I recently heard Jane Munro speak on a panel entitled  “The Inner life of Our Words” at The Malahat Review’s WordsThaw 2014. One of the things that emerged from this panel is how literature creates an opening in its readers, or if I paraphrase Munro, who quoted Jane Hirschfield, a good poem is like a volcanic island, it creates new land, new places. I felt this new land being created, this opening or spreading, as I read Blue Sonoma.

            The book begins with “Sonoma” a poem about following a husband’s old truck down the twisting coastal road home. The poem seems to take place years after he’s lost his license, his memories, perhaps after he’s lost his life, or all at the same time. Perhaps it happens while the narrator is following him through dream and time. It sets the tone for the book up as a series of poems that exist in the real and waking world but that also explore the questions that arise from dream and meditation: “I am following/the spitting image of him/in that battered Sonoma –“ and “only the two of us on the road.” The last line resonates with the metaphor of that lonely twisting road.

            The isolation created here reverberates in all the poems, as in “Old Man Vacanas, 6,” where the narrator invites a visitor: 

My old man won’t know

the difference

between you and billy-be-damned.

…

Roar up the drive. Spit gravel. Blow your horn.

 

I am gnawing through myself.

 

            Dream and meditation are forces throughout the collection. Section headings like “Darkling,” “Dream Poems,” “Old Man Vacanas,” and “Sutra” place the poems in language borrowed from yogic practice, but the poems themselves are imbued with every-day speech, idioms and metaphors that ring. In the ghazal-like series “Darkling, 2”: “And this: dying is not a plot solution./ It doesn’t resolve character flaws”; which then ends on “Peeling the grape of death./ That love would feed you this.” So on multiple registers the poems enter the reader: in metaphor, with humour, with idiom, in questions.

            At WordsThaw, Munro used a metaphor of pregnancy for writing: that something is growing inside over which one has little control. This metaphor works for life, or for death, which grows in each of us. It is a good metaphor for Alzheimer’s, too.

            Often in poetry, unanswerable questions allow a poem to hang suspended. Questions that linger long after the reader, and poet, have left the poem. In “Old Man Vacanas, 1,” Munro writes, “The old man/to whom I’m married/ hits the sack again/ after breakfast.” and ends with, “Tell me, can a soul fatten up for winter?” Other questions that work like worry beads in hand and head, ask “Who’s laughing at us today?” (“Old Man Vacanas, 7”) and from “My mind is my grandchild,”: “Can my mind unlearn anxiety?”

            When I opened this book, I was prepared, knowing Munro’s work, to be brought into myself more deeply through attentive language and metaphors. I was not disappointed. More than this, the interplay between metaphor and the non-linear narrative of her Old Man’s decline into Alzheimer’s allowed for the located/dislocated, the everydayness and the profound symbolism, the questions and the experiences to resonate.

 

Yvonne Blomer’s third book of poems, As If A Raven (Palimpsest Press) will be launched at Russell Books at 7:30 p.m. on April 24, 2014 with Patricia Young’s Summertime Swamp Love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isobel Trigger not to be missed

Reviewed by Blake Jacob

Isobel Trigger’s April 3rd, 2014 show at the Strathcona Clubhouse was a high-caliber performance. The group’s polished act is characterized by ethereal vocals, heavy rhythm, energy and gorgeous melody. Isobel Trigger undoubtedly belongs in a large performance hall and deserves much recognition.

The set began with “Champion,” showing off the band’s expertise and synchronization. Isobel Trigger is comprised of Felicia Harding (vocals, guitar and synth), Brett Faulkner (guitar), Kyle Lowther (bass) and Ariel Tseng (drums).  Harding’s vocals are impossible to ignore.  With a lilting, impressive range reminiscent of Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries, Harding’s style is silvery and enchanting.  Harding is a captivating performer and knows how to engage the audience while maintaining her professional demeanor. Tseng’s skill is particularly apparent in the energy of “Nightmares” and in “Sugar Cube,” keeping a strong beat and a hypnotizing rhythm. The audience nodded and danced with abandon.

The band performed a cover medley of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” and The Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”  Though the covers were flawlessly executed, they paled in comparison to the band’s original work.

The star piece of the night was the band’s single, “Dust and Bones,” an addictive track that juxtaposed powerful crescendo with sweet vocals. The song has recently received frequent airplay on The Zone 91.3, during Isobel Trigger’s title as the station’s Band of the Month. The track has definite potential to top national alt rock/pop charts.

“The song is about those formative experiences you had when listening to certain songs for the first time,” Harding says.  “[It’s about] the magic you felt, and how listening to them now can transport you back to that time, place and feeling.”

The band has several exciting upcoming events, including: Rock The Royal on May 24th, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Royal and McPherson theatres.  The event will feature several well-established local acts and pay tribute to 90s greats. Look for Isobel Trigger at Tall Tree Festival on the last weekend in June, and at July 26th at Lucky Bar for the release of their EP Nocturnal.

Isobel Trigger is unique: they have been likened to No Doubt and Florence and the Machine, probably due to their experimental style. Their skill and sound is too large to be contained on a small stage.  It will be a pleasure to see the band play the Royal Theatre and other locations deserving of their talent.

Rock The Royal tickets/info
http://www.rmts.bc.ca/tickets/production.aspx?performanceNumber=7994

Tall Tree Music Festival
http://talltreemusicfestival.com/2014/

Zone Band of the Month: Isobel Trigger
http://www.thezone.fm/botm/isobel-trigger/

http://www.isobeltrigger.com/

Blake Jacob is a Vancouver Island writer and composer.

What is it to be an asshole?

Assholes: A Theory

By Aaron James

Published by Doubleday

201 Pages (plus Appendix), $25.95

Reviewed by Michael Luis 

We’ve all experienced the wrath of assholes, whether this is every day at work, at home, or—perhaps most commonly—in traffic. In Assholes: A Theory, American philosopher Aaron James contends that “asshole” is more than just an insult for an unpleasant person, but a specific type of human being indelibly ingrained into our society.

James is an associate professor of philosophy at The University of California, Irvine and is known for his book Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for a Global Economy. He holds a PhD form Harvard, and like many of us, has presumably dealt with a lot of assholes.

Right away Assholes establishes its mission statement: “What is it to be an asshole? The answer is not obvious, despite the fact that we are often stuck dealing with people for whom there is no better name. (pg. 2)” This question is examined, and inevitably answered over the book’s seven chapters which feature such titles as “Newer Asshole Styles” and “Asshole Management.”

James applies his experience in both moral and political philosophy to dissect the asshole. I found the former style of philosophy to be the most engaging and interesting. Though I have very limited experience in academic philosophy, I was still able to relate to James’s musings, as I’ve had many run-ins with assholes and found it interesting to look at their make-up from an intellectual perspective. Explorations such as the difference between assholes and psychopaths (pg. 53) and the way we will cuss the word “asshole” even when the asshole can’t hear us (like in traffic) piqued my interest and answered questions I already had going into the book (pg. 127).

The book is also splashed with humour. The part in the second chapter “Naming Names,” where James shows us different types of assholes using relevant pop-culture examples, had me smirking as I flipped the pages. Richard Dawkins is the quintessential “smug asshole” for example; “He writes cocksurely that the views of millions of reasonable and intelligent people have no merit whatsoever… (pg. 40)” Rush Limbaugh and Oasis’s Noel Gallagher are “boorish assholes,” yet Winston Churchill is “boorish, but not quite an asshole. (pg. 47)”

However, this humour almost ends up being the book’s downfall. Assholes is trapped in a strange scenario: the way it examines a brash term with an academic tone could be mistaken for satire; however, the book ultimately ends as a solid moral and political philosophy book with some colourful language. I made this mistake initially, and it took me a little while to realize my misinterpretation and regroup.

I also struggled when the book shifted from moral to political. The political sections felt forced, like James was trying to apply the asshole sheen to the other end of his expertise. The examples within the “Asshole Capitalism” chapter were significantly less concrete than the book’s earlier portions, and were very hard to grasp for a casual plebe like myself with a very limited knowledge of political science (pg. 153). However, I was able to understand his sections on “royal assholes” and “presidential assholes” which combined the political with moral examples such as former American vice-president Dick Cheney (pg. 58).

Though Assholes: A Theory is accessible enough for a philosophy newbie like myself to gain knowledge and entertainment from certain sections, ultimately, this book would be better appreciated in the hands of a philosophy student or enthusiast. I can firmly say this is a much nicer summary than “Fuck this book. I’m better than it.”

As I just learned from James, that’s something an asshole would say.

Michael Luis is a Victoria student, writer, filmmaker, and musician. Check him out at www.michaelacluis.wordpress.com.

Almanac challenges readers to care about wilderness

Chasing Clayoquot: A Wilderness Almanac

By David Pitt-Brooke

Foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Greystone Books

287 Pages, $14

Reviewed by Quinn MacDonald

When David Pitt-Brooke published Chasing Clayoquot: A Wilderness Almanac, he hoped it would be part of a larger effort that would secure the Clayoquot Sound as a widely treasured and protected place, beyond the grasping hands of industry and development. But, as he reluctantly admits in his note for this edition, “nothing could be further from the truth” (xii).

Logging continues, diseases from salmon farms have led culls in the millions, and in August 2013 Vancouver-based Selkirk Metals began exploratory mining for gold in Clayoquot’s Tranquil Valley, to the chagrin of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, who have declared the area a Tribal Park. After decades of activism, and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve designation, the Clayoquot’s position remains perilous.

A trained biologist and veterinarian, Pitt-Brooke worked for Parks Canada as an environmental officer in Glacier, Mount Revelstoke, and Waterton Lakes before he arrived at the Pacific Rim in 1995. It was love at first sight: “I thought I’d gone to heaven. This is one of those rare places where the storehouse of nature is still full to the brim” (3). But as he watched the tourists come and go too hurriedly, and thought of other nature-lovers who lacked the means to make the trip, he knew more had to be done to share the beauty of “this very special place” (5). With this book, he saw his opportunity to help.

Pitt-Brooke has written for a number of scientific and environmental publications, including Canadian Geographic; in 2002 he received a Canadian Science Writers’ Association Award. Chasing Clayoquot is his first book, and in a 2004 interview with Tofino Time Magazine he revealed that it took seven years to finish the project—making it truly a labour of love. The book brims with scientific and historical information, as you would expect with Pitt-Brooke’s background, and while the meticulous research paints a more complete picture of the landscape, the amount of exposition at times became onerous. It would have been more enjoyable if it were integrated into the engaging personal narrative. Jargon and scientific terms like “desiccation” and “profligate” also could have been better explained or left out (172).

The Almanac structure effectively creates a (compressed) sense of life in the Clayoquot, and the monthly incursions into a surprising variety of microhabitats imbue the book with a deep sense of place. And while a little more editing and guidance might have helped with some instances of cliché and redundancy, his vivid and detailed descriptions, particularly those from the air and sea, capture the wild beauty of the West Coast. At times I found myself transported back to my Granddad’s fishing boat, cruising through the Barkley Sound, with the taste of salt water on my lips and the cry of gulls all around.

Pitt-Brooke feels more whole in the natural environment, but also more responsible: “In wilderness we must take responsibility for ourselves. Or maybe: in wilderness, we’re allowed to take responsibility for ourselves. A rare privilege in these times.” In this time of and murky supply chains, it’s easy to waive responsibility for how our lifestyles degrade the environment on which we ultimately depend. Pitt-Brooke sees these effects first-hand, and wants to share that feeling. This book implicates its readers in the cycle of environmental degradation, but also enlists them as protectors: as you read, you become responsible for the Clayoquot.

Whether you’re familiar with the coast or stuck inland, this book is worth the read. The second edition keeps alive Pitt-Brooke’s dream of bringing the beauty of the Clayoquot to a wider audience, as he reminds us that it will take a constant effort to keep these places timeless and whole.

Quinn MacDonald is an environmental activist and UVic student.

Hodgins gently skewers human condition

Cadillac Cathedral

By Jack Hodgins

Ronsdale Press

213 pages; $18.95

Reviewed by Margaret Thompson

In his latest novel, Cadillac Cathedral, Jack Hodgins takes us back to familiar territory, the Macken world of mid-Vancouver Island. He recreates Portuguese Creek, a tiny community off the beaten track and populates it with what would have to be called characters in every sense of the word—retired loggers, a forceful ex-schoolteacher, eccentric chicken farmers. The focal point is Arvo Saarikoski, “a man in his seventies whose retirement years were filled with the pleasure of restoring cars and trucks that had been wrecked and then abandoned by those who could afford to replace them.”

Arvo hears of a vintage hearse, a Cadillac Cathedral, which is allegedly being used to haul logs out in the bush. It is a serendipitous moment, for Martin Glass, who used to be the local M.P., has died in Victoria. Arvo conceives of the idea of rescuing the hearse, collecting Martin’s body to bring it back home for a suitably dignified send-off, and then returning the hearse to its rightful owner, Myrtle, the daughter of a former local undertaker. Arvo is a lifelong bachelor, despite the determined efforts of the Woman from Thunder Bay and sundry other females, but he has enshrined Myrtle in his heart ever since their schooldays.

It is easy to visualize this novel as a road movie, a version for elders proceeding at the dignified pace of the vintage hearse, a leisurely journey that reflects the lives of the participants and the social mores of their world. Arvo and his retinue set off on their picaresque way to the south Island where Martin and Myrtle both wait, unaware. Naturally there are delays: Arvo reflects that some would consider “his whole life looked like a series of detours,” which they would call avoidance. Certainly, “a detour was also a reminder that there was no end of ways in which life could keep you from even reaching your destination,” and that is exactly the result here, with local businessmen hoping to acquire the hearse for publicity purposes,  most notably with the vehicle being “borrowed” to star at a pre-mortem wake.

The slow pace gives Arvo plenty of time to reflect, and this inner debate is one of the most human elements of the story. Arvo has always been “a man who fixed things—machines anyway.” Decisions are another matter, especially when other people are involved. The advisability of renewing acquaintance with the unattainable Myrtle involves a mental roller coaster of indecision which life resolves in typically unsuspected ways.

And that, of course, is the real subject here. The final events at Martin’s seaside funeral seem to offer Arvo a different kind of future with Cynthia’s dreams of reviving her old drive-in movie business. As Arvo discovered with Myrtle, however, “something that belonged entirely in your past might as well disappear altogether once you were no longer part of it.” There is already evidence at the funeral that the demands of the future will override the nostalgic pull of the past: Martin’s absentee sons are already negotiating real estate deals at their father’s old home.

Hodgins calls his novel A Tale. A hint, perhaps, that we should enjoy this story for its narrative elements, for its light-hearted humour and gentle skewering of the human condition—for its sheer entertainment value—and also be prepared to recognize it as being more than the sum of its parts, almost allegorical. Cynthia, willing to embrace uncertainty, sums up the intent best: “Haven’t you noticed?” she says. “We start life over again every day. All of us. Even a man who hides in his workshop with grease up to his elbows.”

Margaret Thompson launches her new novel, The Cuckoo’s Child, at Russell Books, Tuesday, April 15, 2014,  at 7 p.m.