Tag Archives: book review

Rakoff’s last work darkly funny

Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish
By David Rakoff
Doubleday
113 pp, $32
Reviewed by John Barton

Anyone who follows This American Life or Wiretap will know of David Rakoff, the Canadian-born humourist, who died of cancer in 2012 at 47. Journalist, broadcaster, screenwriter, actor, and artist, he published three books of essays that won two Lambda Literary Awards and a James Thurber Prize for American Humor. Hardbound with a die-cut cover, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish was published in the summer of 2013, a year after the author’s death. A novel in verse, it is illustrated by Toronto cartoonist Seth; his portraits of Rakoff’s characters sit on the heavy creamy stock disingenuously and resistant to bleed-through.

Rakoff’s narrative strategy is a memorable example of six degrees of separation. The characters—or clusters of characters, all mostly strangers to one another—are scattered in time and place from New York to Chicago, Burbank, and San Francisco, each sometimes making only one star turn or cameo as the twentieth century unfolds from just before the First World World War to the late-century AIDS crisis, before spilling in rhyming couplets into the third millennium. As one storyline is cast off for another, readers may wonder if the spun-out narratives will ever twine into one coherent thread. Hints of how they might are dropped here and there. For example, the first story closes with Margaret, a 13-year-old, Chicago meatpacker escaping an abusive stepfather, being saved from the deathly cold in a westward-hurtling boxcar by a Yiddish-whispering hobo, who holds her inside his coat. In the next story, we learn he is Hiram, the dying father of Clifford, an artistic boy growing up queer in Los Angeles during the 1920s.

Because any real ties between the book’s characters are few, we turn Rakoff’s hundred-and-first page (with only twelve to go) speculating that he may have died before he could shore up his shaky narrative arc. However, he pulls everything together in the last twenty lines. That we close the book appreciating how tenuously his characters are interconnected, even if his characters never do themselves, permits Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish to make an impassioned claim for poignancy.

This novel in verse is no Changing Light at Sandover; nor is it another Autobiography in Red, but it does belong to a tradition of light verse that Americans have excelled at since the Gilded Age (Rakoff became a U.S. citizen in 2003). It’s as entertaining as anything Don Marquis or Dorothy Parker wrote. Anyone familiar with “The Night Before Christmas” should easily recognize the verve of Rakoff’s versifying ambitions.

Though I found his reliance on near-exact rhymes exhausting, his wit amused me throughout. A good example is a passage from the point of view of Sloan, a control-freak realtor who lives an Upper East Side dream that her incontinent mother-in-law renders nightmarish:

The family was blessed and seemed wholly awash
In the kind of good fortune one doesn’t dare dream,
Near-parodically copious, bursting the seams
Of the sky; heaven-sent, like the biblical gift of the manna,
Until her thoughts happened to land upon Hannah.
One Hannah hint seems to be all that it takes
For Sloan’s inner Lexus to slam on the brakes.

I may not own a car, but my solar plexus spasmed with mirth.

Rakoff also succeeds at moving his readers. We last see Clifford, one of his few recurring characters, as he laboriously succumbs to HIV:

What a difference a day makes. Now times that by twenty.
Clifford was hollow, a Horn of Un-Plenty.
Tipping the scales at one-fifteen at most
He was more bone than flesh now, and less man than ghost.
The CMV daily lay waste to his sight
Now, it was all Renoir smearings of light,
I loathe Renoir, Clifford thought, chocolate-box hack.
Chuckling, his hacking cough wrenching his back.

For light verse, this passage is very dark, affirming that such poetry can be serious honestly. A gay man, Rakoff lived in New York through the AIDS crisis and must have witnessed countless friends and acquaintances die. One cannot help imagining their deaths returned to him while writing the very darkest moments of this posthumous book.

I also wonder if the chocolate-box reference is not a wry putdown of Forrest Gump, that loathsomely saccharine movie that for far too long allows its eponymous central character to recount his bathetic life. Despite the light-footedness of this verse, there’s nothing too sweet about Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish. Though their stories are often pathetic, pathos lightens how Rakoff chose to let his characters live out what we see of their lives.

John Barton is the editor of The Malahat Review.

Coal-mine disaster dusted off to good effect

The Devil’s Breath

The story of the Hillcrest Mine Disaster of 1914

By Steve Hanon

NeWest Press

327 pages, $24.95

Reviewed by Lorne Daniel

The early years of the 20th century seems distant, faded from today’s viewpoint, almost a full century later. European powers and their “new world” spinoffs still saw western Canada as a sparsely populated hinterland. Tucked into the remote Crowsnest Pass in the south-west corner of the new province of Alberta, however, were a number of coal mines producing the energy that would fuel the first burst of western development.

In June of 1914, the worst mining disaster in Canadian history took the lives of 189 men at Hillcrest Mine in the pass. The story of that disaster has been largely overlooked in our cultural record — and not only because it happened so long ago.

The disaster was covered by western media, but little of the news was picked up in the east. Western coal itself rarely travelled as far east as Manitoba, so the story simply did not reverberate very far afield.

Yet, for a region that had suffered the Frank Slide just 11 years earlier, the Hillcrest explosion was another devastating blow. Filmmaker-author Steve Hanon sifts through conflicting and confusing sources – newspapers, inquiry reports, company reports and memoirs – to patch together a picture of what happened at Hillcrest before, during, and after the explosion and fires.

The Devil’s Breath takes over 100 pages to lead us to the day of the disaster. The context, Hanon says, is everything. He takes readers inside the industrial age thinking of the time, the heated world of coal mining labour struggles, and the work ethic that drove small frontier communities.

The mine exploded between 9:15 and 9:30 am on June 19, 1914, killing many miners instantly. In the book’s most gripping chapter, “Without Air to Breathe,” we follow the frantic escape attempts and rescue efforts that filled the minutes and hours immediately after the explosion. Miners scramble to find escape routes and air to breathe. Rescuers head down shafts, retreat for air and equipment, return at considerable risk and often stumble into caverns filled with the bodies of their friends and co-workers.

What went wrong? Why do Canadians know so little about Hillcrest? The story moves from life and death heroics to the frustrating opacity of our economic, governmental and social systems. One is left believing that there were far too many vested interests in Hillcrest for real accountability to stick. To his credit, Hanon avoids the temptation to pick out a single, arbitrary villain. “The truth likely lay tangled somewhere in the Gordian Knot of human behavior that involved politics, the struggle for control, human failings, fear, shrugged shoulders, equivocation, evasions and fatalism,” he concludes.

The Devil’s Breath is presented in a handsome trade paperback edition with 20 pages of photographs, a useful glossary, an event timeline, a full listing of the disaster’s victims, bibliography and other notes. It is a thorough package.

The effect is more archival than imaginative, which is appropriate. Hanon did not set out to write a new story set in the context of Hillcrest, but to clear away the coal dust and give us a good look at the original story. That he does admirably.

Lorne Daniel lives in Victoria, B.C.. His blog Writing:Place is at http://lornedaniel.ca

Shy in person, bold on the page

Shy: An Anthology

Edited by Naomi K. Lewis & Rona Altrows

The University of Alberta Press

171 pages, $24.95

Reviewed by Senica Maltese

Shy, An Anthology battles the stigmas and assumptions that surround what it means to be shy with a collection of poems and personal essays. As someone who has always self-identified as shy, regardless of my peers’ boisterous disagreements, I approached this anthology with a combination of weariness and curiosity. I found the foreword, which described, with great spirit, the crippling effects of shyness and social anxiety, nerve-wracking. It did not seem true to my experience, and I became worried that this anthology, though full to the brim with good intention, would dramatize shyness, making it feel less real, less important. I was afraid that shyness would become a caricature.

Luckily, by the end of the book, this fear was assuaged. I found the personal essays particularly interesting and engaging. Some of the contributors recounted childhood experiences much like mine.  For instance, Naomi K. Lewis describes French Immersion in her contribution, “Say Water.” Primarily, the essays recounted childhood experiences, though some did discuss shyness in adulthood. For this reason, I couldn’t help but think that these stories would make powerful guest lectures at elementary or high schools. As someone who has already worked through the shyness of childhood, these stories did not carry as much weight for me as they might for someone in the midst of these feelings.

I appreciated  those essays that focused on shyness in early adulthood, and even late adulthood. I particularly enjoyed Jeff Miller’s “Common Loon,” which recounts his experiences with shyness in a foreign country after a disastrous break up. Debbie Bateman’s “Amongst the Unseen and Unheard” reminded me that the “most damaging part of shyness isn’t the embarrassment,” but rather “the missed moments” and all the meaningful connections that we fail to make due to our own fears.

As for the poetry, I really enjoyed Lorna Crozier’s contribution, “Watching My Lover,” which is indescribably beautiful, and Kerry Ryan’s “How to be shy,” which has a refreshingly comedic take on shyness. The first segment of Ryan’s poem, entitled “How to be shy: the hug,” is especially funny, but also reflects how I and other shy individuals feel when confronted with random acts of physical closeness.

Even though Shy had its ups and downs, as with any anthology, I found it to be a  worthwhile read that I would recommend to anyone who has felt some sort of philosophical compulsion to understand her or his own shyness. In many ways, Shy is a compilation of coming of age stories centred on bashful, artistic individuals. And I am thankful to them for sharing their experiences.

Senica Maltese is a BA student focusing on Honours English and Writing.

Harris wins his second contest

Thorazine Beach

By Bradley Harris

Anvil Press

127 pp., $16

Reviewed by Tyler Gabrysh

In this private-investigator-driven intrigue, dialogue proves hard hitting, wise ass, rarely subtle and never dull. Action isn’t far behind despite events often cloaked in unknowns and half-truths.

Working  in the disparate socio-economic divisions of Memphis, Jack Minyard is a transplanted Canuck who experiences both ends of the economic spectrum, although pretending to hobnob in ritzy clubs is about as good as it gets.

Generally he scrapes by in the trenches of uncomfortably long stakeouts (in car and in thicket), and eking it out in a series of shabby motels with suspect clientele who likewise call such places home. Life for him is an unravelling carpet. And not in red. Now 60,  a recovering alcoholic, and Thorazine user (to ‘even things out’), Minyard has also been ditched by wife Lynette, and that’s not all. His diet is terrible, portliness reigns, and his name is still smeared (innocent or not),  from a money laundering and fraud scandal a while back.

Whether this history is presented in Ruby Ruby, the first of a series based on our lead character is unclear. That book by  Harris won the 21st Annual International 3-Day Novel Writing Contest. What’s even more impressive is that Harris became the only repeat winner with this book in the 2012 competition.

The main characters of Thorazine Beach all chide Jack (thanks in no part to his weakened confidence), but they also care about him in ways more often implied than expressed. Readers witness the sass of Starbucks shift supervisor Nicki Jenks and MacDonald of the Memphis PD, another attitudinal character Jack works for (with promise of nebulous payment). He’s never fully privy to his assignment but it’s one he’s fully counted on for.

Brutish Eileen at Red Line Investigations occasionally throws him a bone, however he’s technically not an employee. And though he receives praise for breaking big on a big bucks insurance fraud, no takers at the office on his ‘my treat’ after-hours celebration offer.

Unknown to him, she arranges a meeting with Barbara Jean McCorkle, a church zealot, casserole-making, uppity, cringe-worthy sort of lady. She already knows Jack, wants his help on her own case concerning sudden money-bags husband Clayton, but becomes unsettled when he presses her for concrete details.

Even though readers will root for Minyard as Minyard finds his backbone, the novel has its weak points. The chapters do not run sequentially (though they provide us a brief heading of calendar date, time, and location). This does unnecessary disservice to the narrative, as one frequently needs to flip back for reference.

Further, the wrap up of characters with plot is hurried and feels inconsistent with the in-depth story line and pacing that preceded it. Still, I’m curious to find out what’s next for likeable Jack Minyard.

Tyler Gabrysh (www.tylergabrysh.com) is a writer living in Victoria.

YA novel limns graffiti complexities

Burning from the Inside

By Christine Walde

Cormorant/Dancing Cat Books

240 pages, $14.95

Reviewed by Kirsten Larmon

Christine Walde’s second book for young adults, Burning from the Inside, is a richly complex, often lyrical novel that portrays the rarely addressed graffiti artist community.

The perspective shifts between Thom, an eighteen-year-old graffiti artist who has been on the street for three years, and Aura, an artist with strong beliefs about art, politics and the rest of her world.  I found these shifts, Aura’s terse narration, and a lack of dialogue indicators,  at first more jarring than engaging. However, as I persisted, I found myself hooked into Thom and Aura’s world and their mysterious quest.

Thom has just been caught graffiti-writing for the third time, a serious offence. However, rather than be handed over to his parents, Thom cuts a deal with the police. He agrees to help find a notorious graffiti crew who call themselves the G7 and who have been defacing billboards all over the city. By day, Thom will be serving his community time “buffing” graffiti off walls; by night, he will be free to graffiti those same walls, posing as an artist named TNT and searching out the G7. However, when he meets the group and Aura, a dedicated member, Thom begins to question everything he has been told. Together Thom and Aura begin a search for the truth behind the G7’s leader and a missing young female graffiti artist, Story.

Burning is a book about growing up and finding one’s way, populated by teens trying to sort out who they are, what their world is, and how they intend to inhabit it. Unlike many authors who write for teen audiences, Walde allows her characters some bad behaviour without punishing them for it: pot, alcohol and ecstasy are all consumed (in moderation) without wrecking lives. Her teens are strident in their beliefs and full of certainty about the alienation and corruption of the corporate adult world. Though it is set in the present, real world, there is a touch of mysticism to the novel – a hint of fate and prophesy that runs through dreams, visions, and substance trips.

Thom and Aura are compelling characters, and the mystery which overtakes them is well-paced and suspenseful. A poet, Walde’s prose is precise and often beautiful, if sometimes elevated beyond language typical of the YA landscape: obscure words like “elegiacally” pop up from time to time. However, the novel is not without weaknesses: there are plot points that fray on close inspection, characters whose actions feel overly piloted by the author and movie cliches that skim over difficult plausibility issues. In particular, one character’s motivations are barely comprehensible and culminate in a final scene that feels like a derailment of his portrayal throughout most of the novel.

Burning from the Inside is not a simple read. It is a complex book for the inquisitive, the dreamers and the literary – a perhaps small, but certainly important, segment of the young-adult reading market.

Kirsten Larmon is a Victoria resident

 

 

 

 

First Nations voices powerful

We are Born with Songs Inside Us:

Lives and Stories of First Nations People in British Columbia

By Katherine Palmer Gordon

Harbour Publishing, 2013

246 pages,  $24.95

Reviewed by Margaret Thompson

As its publisher suggests, Katherine Palmer Gordon’s sixth book, We Are Born with the Songs Inside Us, is particularly timely. Regrettably, Canadians have grown accustomed to finding First Nations issues in the headlines. The long litany of grievances—poverty, inadequate housing, addiction, disproportionate suicide and imprisonment rates, abuse of women, not to mention the toxic legacy of the residential schools—has created a sad and negative climate for Aboriginal people. This is where Gordon’s book is most timely, for it challenges those negative stereotypes and offers a truly optimistic view of First Nations people.

Gordon interviewed hundreds of individuals, but presents profiles of sixteen in her book. Their backgrounds and occupations are as varied as you would expect in any group: they are teachers and artists, entrepreneurs and politicians, doctors and actors, athletes and councillors, lawyers and chiefs. Some have seen their way clearly from the beginning; others have struggled to overcome disadvantages. What they have in common is success and a powerful belief in the value of their cultural heritage.

In her Introduction, Gordon  describes the role of father birds in teaching their offspring the full range of their characteristic songs. “A baby bird that does not have the opportunity to hear its father sing will never learn its proper song. It will remain bereft of its complete identity, and the single most important characteristic governing its ability to take care of itself, be independent, communicate and relate—not only to members of its own species, but to all other creatures.”

The analogy with First Nations people is persuasive. The residential schools set out deliberately to erase that identity. Many of the individuals profiled in this book are the children of the generation so damaged by that policy. They see clearly that they need to go back to first principles; as Trudy Lynn Warner says, “I know we have been and continue to be guided on our path by our ancestors,” and Clarence Louie states firmly,”My basic mantra is: make sure you keep your cultural identity.” Some strive passionately to preserve their languages, seeing in them the key to that identity; “After all,” says Mike Willie, “if you don’t know who you are, you’re just roaming this world, lost.”

The individuals whose voices are heard in this book are quick to point out that there is no stagnation involved in returning to ancestral ways. They see that the strength acquired by knowing exactly who they are enables them to move forward, whether that involves creating a business, perfecting new art forms or negotiating a treaty. Clarence Louie added to his basic mantra: “…if you want to prosper, get an education, work hard and throw everything you can at economic development.” None of these individuals stands still; all of them share Beverley O’Neil’s strategy for marathon running, aiming not at the finishing line, but past it.

Gordon’s subjects know they have a long way to go, but their conviction and enthusiasm is impossible to downplay. The voices of these young, articulate First Nations people convey boundless optimism for the future. How astute Gordon was to get out of the way and let them speak for themselves.

Margaret Thompson’s new novel, The Cukoo’s Child, will be published in Spring 2014

Contest-winning novel still kills

Small Apartments

By Chris Millis

Anvil Press

127 pp., $16

Reviewed by Tyler Gabrysh

Meet Franklin Franklin, a short, fat, forty-something with a few eccentricities and one fantastic problem. Chris Millis’ winning entry in the 23rd Annual International 3-Day Novel Writing Contest (2000), which also received major motion picture treatment last year, is fresh off the press again in a second edition.

Somewhat similar in plot and, to a degree, sensibility with Hans Keilson’s “Comedy in a Minor Key,” “Small Apartments” opens with:

Face up and smiling lay the warm, dead body of Albert Olivetti on the cracked, linoleum kitchenette floor of Franklin’s small apartment on the west side of Buffalo.

From here we experience our protagonist’s comically deranged (and at times naïve and sarcastic, we’re never sure) personality, to go with his odd habits and awkward physical self, juxtaposed with a host of colourful minor characters.

There’s brother Bernard who sends him envelopes of fingernail clippings from a psychiatric centre, the lovely mother-teenage daughter tandem across the street who warm up his binoculars, and the two other tenants in the 100 Garner building.

Tommy Balls is a prototypical lazy stoner with a family-disassociated father and a bible-thumping mother who’s devoted herself to the teachings of one author-TV celeb psych doc, Sage Mennox; a man name-checked throughout the book and indeed pops up at one point. The other tenant is Mr. Allspice, a no-nonsense retired marine who detests Franklin and the wall-shaking bellow of his Swiss Alphorn (yes, that’s right!)

Millis employs linguistic ease with deft wit in writing about circumstances just real enough to be plausible and yet uneasily intriguing. It’s akin to viewing a gruesome accident as the paramedics scramble about the highway. He’s fittingly chosen an array of unique names (Burt Walnut, anyone?) and the setting choices of Lackawanna and Buffalo (over, say, Brooklyn) isn’t per chance either.

Having lived with his brother for twenty-two years, Franklin has become even more the hermit in the four years after Bernard’s confinement. But he does cradle his lifelong dreams of the heaven he’s built Switzerland up to be. His abode is modest, and we intermittently find him ruminating on what to do with the corpse inside it. The urgency is there, sort of, and at one point we experience his funny pontificating of alternatives. as if he’s selecting items at a buffet.

The strengths of this book, such as this absurdity, are utilized well in the mere two days of the entire fiction, and like “Seinfeld,” not all the laughs and attention are entirely protagonist-focused. Tommy, Allspice, Walnut, and Bernard all have their own little brief spotlight (though Allspice’s feels misplaced, disjointed, and briefly out-of-character).

Within hours of a barn going up in smoke, a triptych of proficient fire and police pals begin their investigation. Coincidentally Bernard also dies, though he still has surprises in store for Franklin.

As the short chapters fly by in this wonderful, and often humourous read, the narrative gets neither cheesy (in a bad way) nor obvious as the authorities close in while their suspect heads back to his small apartment.

Tyler Gabrysh (www.tylergabrysh.com) is a writer  living in Victoria.

 

Gateway expose shows inaction no option

The Oil Man and the Sea:

Navigating the Northern Gateway

By Arno Kopecky

Douglas & McIntyre

264 pages, $26.95

Reviewed by Aaron Shepard

Part rousing adventure and travelogue, part exposé, The Oil Man and the Sea follows journalist and travel writer Arno Kopecky and photographer Ilja Herb as they sail from Victoria up B.C.’s central coast. They travel not just as reporters but as activists, hoping to raise awareness about the environmental risks the Northern Gateway pipeline poses to one of the world’s last great wildernesses.

As with most books of this sort, we begin not with big themes, but the adventurer-writer beset by anchor mishaps, engine failure and an overwhelming array of nautical charts and equipment. At times in the first few chapters, their quest seems not just quixotic, but forgotten altogether. But the fumbling of these novice sailors is an intimate, effective way of immersing readers in an unfamiliar landscape. And their early misadventures dovetail nicely with one of the book’s main themes: the vibrant, hazardous complexity of the coastline and its people.

Kopecky introduces us, directly or indirectly, to the multitude of big names at the centre of the Northern Gateway drama, including Enbridge, the federal and provincial governments, the Joint Review Panel, the Heiltsuk, Gitga’at, Haisla Nations, the Pacific Pilotage Authority (the pilot boats that would lead oil tankers through the treacherous coastline), and Bill C-38, the federal omnibus bill that inexplicably closed B.C.’s oil spill response centre. We also meet a host of memorable characters: fishermen, engineers, environmentalists, First Nations elders and band councilors who offer their different opinions about pipelines, refineries and oil tankers.

But it is the coastline itself – a “labyrinth” of channels, straits, bays and islands – that remains the biggest player on stage, a place both robust and fragile with its turbulent seas, salmon runs and rich wildlife. Perhaps the most vivid evocation of place is near the book’s end, when Kopecky explores Douglas Channel and the humpback whales that may have to share their once-quiet waters with tankers bearing bitumen and liquefied natural gas.

Between conversations with the locals, fishing and grizzly bear watching – the book contains some gorgeous photos – Kopecky pulls the lens back to show the equally intricate web of national politics, science and economics. An adventure that begins with two young men goofing around on a sailboat becomes a story about Big Oil, and the future of a province, its people and its wilderness.

The Oil Man and the Sea is refreshingly current and vital, with a postscript that includes the deadly explosion in Lac-Megantic this past July. Disasters like Lac-Megantic and the Kalamazoo River bitumen spill in 2010 illustrate our complicity: our consumption drives the need to pull as much oil from the ground as humanly possible, whatever the risk. Kopecky’s quest for a tanker-free coast may indeed prove quixotic, but his message is that we should take responsibility, at the very least, for ensuring governments and industry enforce and follow strict environmental and safety regulations. No matter how confusing or paradoxical the issue of pipelines and the economy, our inaction is not an option.

Aaron Shepard is a Victoria writer. His debut novel, When is a Man, will be published in April 2014. 

 

Bullfighter flashes cape at gender

Matadora

By Elizabeth Ruth

Comorant

327 pages, $21.95

Reviewed by Chris Fox

            Matadora is Elizabeth Ruth’s third novel. It follows Smoke, her second novel, which tells an entransing tale of a small Ontario tobacco town in the late fifties, and Ten Good Seconds of Silence, her first, which now that I’ve read Matadora and Smoke, I will soon seek out. Both previous novels were finalists for a number of literary prizes.

            Matadora shifts to 1930s Spain, but Ruth’s interest in history remains. As Smoke took literary and healing energy from the exploits of The Purple Gang, notorious in prohibition era Detroit, Matadora gains gravitas by invoking the Spanish Civil War. Similarly, Ruth remains interested in the gender queer. In Smoke, a transman steals the show, but in Matadora, the ambiguous, ambitious Luna is the show. She is a wonderfully realized character that we first meet, appropriately (The Sun Also Rises) at sunrise, with the silhouette of a Sangre Caste bull behind her. She is leaping from a wall, spurred by the absence (since birth) of her mother, and sure, at that moment, that she can fly.

We are also introduced to Manuel, who acts as Luna’s double and foil throughout the novel, a character device that serves Ruth well. He is the first-born son of the ranchero owner and meant to be a bull-fighter, but he aspires to be a poet – an ambition as unlikely as Luna’s desire to become a matadora. Both seek flight from their given lives and offer each other what help they can. Their bond, like Luna’s wilful talent, is blood-borne, provoking reconsideration of nature/nurture debates.

Ruth has done terrific research, especially into the details of the making of a matadora. She even introduces “anti-taurinos,” early animal rights activists. (Interestingly, the Spanish word implies that they are anti-bull, not anti-bull-fighting, which is indicative of how aficionados (mis)understand the raising, training, and killing of bulls for loving and respecting the animals. Somewhere here lies my only reservation in recommending Matadora. Despite the many clever metaphoric uses of bull-fighting in the novel, the more primary focus is on actual bull-fighting, which I think some readers may find difficult. I myself wondered how I would write about it; however, I did find the novel’s attempt to convey the aficionados’ and matadors’ perspective worthwhile. Daring the bull has a long and mythic cultural history, and Matadora draws on that heritage. When Luna explains the mystery of it, as she often does, I almost understood.

Moreover, in a clever last pass, Ruth has Canada provide Grace, a young Canadian who has come to help fight Franco. Unlike Luna, who spills blood in the ring, Grace transports blood to the front. Of course she is an anti-taurino. Matadora stages a confrontation between what is bright (Luna and her suit of lights) in the darkness that is bull-fighting and the gaze of the New World struggling to understand the Old. Grace is drawn to Luna, but remains judgemental and although the novel offers Luna Grace, Luna chooses to be only matadora. It is enough for her and probably enough for most readers. Ruth has given us a very well-crafted novel.

Chris Fox is a Victoria writer, editor, and instructor.

 

Boyden hauntingly explores body

The Orenda

By Joseph Boyden

Hamish Hamilton

496 pages, $32

By Diana Davidson

Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda is a novel about: the birth of Canada as a nation, the complex hierarchies and trade arrangements that defined Huron and Iroquois Nations at the time of first European contact, the devastating hubris of colonial enterprise.  It’s also a story about people’s capacity for resilience, revenge, and grace in moments of extraordinary loss.

For me, The Orenda is a book about the body.  I am haunted by Boyden’s exploration of the corporeal in his third novel.  Maybe this is a sign of the skilled job Boyden does at creating flesh-and-blood characters on the page.  Maybe this shows how well Boyden recreates the harshness of survival in seventeeth-century ‘Canada.’  As with other great contemporary novels about colonial histories (Beloved, Book of Negroes, Kiss of the Fur Queen), bodies in The Orenda are always both personal and political. 

The most intimate and central relationship of the novel – between a Huron leader and the young Iroquois girl who becomes his daughter – begins when Bird kidnaps Snow Falls after killing her family in a retaliation raid and drags her back to his Wendat village along with the Jesuit Priest Christophe.  Snow Falls tries to resist her captivity with the only means at her disposal – her own body – by starving herself, pissing in Bird’s bed, sleeping.  Later in the story her pregnant body holds the tenuous potential for the community’s renewal after epidemics and conflict bring devastation.

            The Orenda has many brutal scenes.  I disagree, however, with Hayden King’s criticism that “the inevitable conclusion is that Indians were really just very violent” (in Muskrat Magazine).  Boyden is careful to show us, through the French Priest Christophe’s reaction to the torture the Huron inflict upon the Iroquois, that these rituals do not indicate “savageness” but rather civilization.  The French Priest sees the complicated performance of torture as proof that the people he futilely tries to convert are more similar to the people of his homeland (who burn witches and heretics at the stake) and to the great inquisitors of Spain than he had realized.  Brutality becomes a universal human trait.

What is perhaps most compelling about bodies in The Orenda is that this is also a very spiritual text.  The title itself is the Huron word signifying that all things have an essence (which translates most closely into “spirit”).  The corporeal and spiritual are intertwined for Bird, Snow Falls, and their community in a way that Christophe (and later his flock of Jesuits) try to deny and separate. We see this connection in the medicine woman Gosling’s ability to heal by knowing the natural world (herbs) and the spiritual (rituals that draw out illness).  We see this disconnect in Christophe’s resignation to starvation and torture, his focus on the afterlife, and even his celibacy that the Wendat women find ludicrous.

This tension between the physical and spiritual ultimately ensures that Boyden’s characters are complex people who we can love, hate, mourn, and, perhaps forgive.  In light of the irreconcilably violent history of our country, this potential of forgiveness as a very human quality rather than a supernatural one is, in my opinion, The Orenda’s greatest achievement of many.

Diana Davidson’s debut novel Pilgrimage is about women and men on the Lac St. Anne Settlement at the turn of the twentieth century.  On November 19 at 7 p.m., she will be in Victoria, speaking with local writer Pauline Holdstock, at Russell Books.