Tag Archives: Margaret Thompson

Study of unique map illuminates past

 Mr. Selden’s Map of China

By Timothy Brook

House of Anansi Press

211 pages; $29.95

Reviewed by Margaret Thompson

The key word in the subtitle of Timothy Brook’s work of historical detection, Mr Selden’s Map of China, is “decoding.” Even at the most superficial level the map is fascinating; for an expert on the history of China, like the author, it posed many intriguing questions. Bequeathed to the Bodleian library in 1654 by John Selden, an English lawyer and pioneer Oriental scholar, it was largely ignored for three and a half centuries until quite recently, when a curious reader asked to see it, and Brook was called in to inspect the hidden treasure. “The more I examined the map,” he says, “the more it troubled me.”

The map is one of a kind. It was drawn at a time when China had little contact with the world outside its borders, and actively discouraged the export of maps. This practice was maintained well into the twentieth century, as Brook can personally attest. The cartographer is unknown, but the principles by which he worked were original and sophisticated, and seem to reflect acquaintance with European maps of the area. Where most ancient Chinese maps focus on China itself, to the exclusion of surrounding countries and geographical features, and conform to traditional concepts of the country as a square, this map has the giant hole of the South China Sea at its heart, and features the other countries of South East Asia as well as the clusters of tiny islands in the sea. A further mystery is the intricate network of lines crisscrossing the map, as well as the inclusion of a compass and what appears to be a scale of some sort. As a final flourish, the map is full of place names, drawings of trees, mountains and animals, including two butterflies in the Gobi desert.

The expertise Brook uses to decode the map is probably available to very few people. His book, then, must explain a great deal that is not common knowledge in terms that are engaging and accessible. This he achieves. Mr Selden’s Map of China may be a meticulously scholarly argument, but it will also appeal to anybody who enjoys teasing deductions from enigmatic clues, or persuading the long-dead to speak and give up their secrets. In addition, the book contains a wealth of esoteric detail, little informational nuggets at every turn to enlighten and amuse as the reader follows the author along his winding path. Chapter 3, for instance, starts with the King’s Evil, and leads to a breakfast for James II in the Bodleian, a pair of globes, a food fight after the king left, a Jesuit translation of Confuscius, a conversation about the “little blinking fellow”—Michael Shen—his journey from China to Oxford, his translations, his portrait and its iconography, study of Oriental languages, the annotations on the map—and that takes us only halfway through.

This attention to detail, and the step-by-step construction of his thesis, makes Brook’s conclusions about the map, its construction, and its purpose all the more persuasive. He seems to agree with Zhang Huang that the duty of the scholar is “to amass the best knowledge and to make it available to those faced with real-world problems.” No surprise, then, when he concludes that the map reveals that China’s obsession about ownership of the islands off its coast, which is a significant source of tension in the area today, was already a concern in the seventeenth century. Like any good historian, Brook uses the past to illuminate the present.    

Margaret Thompson’s new novel, The Cuckoo’s Child, has just been published by Brindle and Glass.       

 

 

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.

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.

Author sees maps as repositories of history

The Land of Heart’s Delight: Early Maps and Charts of Vancouver Island

By Michael Layland

Touchwood Editions

232 pages,  $39.95

Reviewed by Margaret Thompson

            In this meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated book, Michael Layland traces the development of the accurate, detailed maps of Vancouver Island we take for granted today. His own qualifications as a cartographer and historian, with a special interest in exploration and map-making, ensure that this account will more than satisfy the most exacting academic and scientific scrutiny, but rest assured, that does not mean it would appeal only to scholars. What this book does, in terms that even those with the most limited acquaintance with maps can follow, is to conjure Vancouver Island almost literally out of thin air.

            Near the end of the book, Layland refers to the work of the anthropologist Franz Boas, and shows a long list of traditional Kwakwaka’wakw place names Boas collected which demonstrate the First Nation’s intimate knowledge of the coast where they had lived for centuries. By contrast, the earliest European visitors to the North-West in the sixteenth century were venturing into completely uncharted territory, armed only with rumour and speculation and their own courage. The earliest maps of the region reflect this tenuous grip on reality: fragmentary pieces of unattached coastline, possible straits, rocks and mountains covered with tiny hand-drawn trees, straggling lines that peter out when circumstances forced the explorers to turn back. At the time, those early mariners did not even realize they were travelling beside an island, and thought they were mapping the mainland.

            Readers of this book are in much the same position as the very earliest visitors. The island is hidden at first, but as the author leads us through the centuries, its outline becomes more defined, its intricacies more exactly delineated, its salient features given lasting names, each successive map and chart visibly more accurate and reliable, until the familiar outline emerges. Nor is that the end of the process, for the interior of the island remained an unknown quantity for many years, and the surveyors’ maps of areas of development are just as fascinating as those of the ocean-going explorers.

            What is immediately obvious from the author’s entertaining narrative is how much history, how much human experience, is concentrated in these two-dimensional representations of a three-dimensional world. The maps are the products of a variety of motivations: curiosity, the search for a Pacific entrance to the fabled north-west passage, politics and jockeying for power, diplomatic missions, trade, gold, farming, colonization. The maps also immortalize the people involved in their making, for it was as commonplace for explorers and surveyors to name the straits and bays and islands and hills they discovered after themselves, their colleagues, and their vessels, as it is for a botanist to add his name to a new species. So Layland shows that in the very names familiar to all Island dwellers, and easily located on any modern map—Haro, Juan de Fuca (who was actually Greek), Vancouver, Broughton, Meares, Mayne, Baker, Pandora, Cormorant, Quadra, Gabriola, Pemberton, to name just a few—lies the whole history of European involvement in “the land of heart’s delight” at the edge of the world. 

Margaret Thompson’s new novel, The Cuckoo’s Child, is being published this spring.

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

Family conflict captures pain of past

The Widow Tree

Nicole Lundrigan

Harbour Publishing

312 pages; $22.95

 

Reviewed by Margaret Thompson

Nicole Lundrigan’s fifth novel, The Widow Tree, is a complex tale of hidden wrongs, of stillborn plans, of betrayal and fatal misunderstandings. Above all, it is about consequences and the long arm of the past. The author chooses a perfect setting for this unsettling story, abandoning the East Coast background of previous novels for a small village in 1950s Yugoslavia, a country which no longer exists, torn apart by festering ethnic and religious resentments after the death of Tito and the collapse of Communism.

The first chapter takes us far back to a military encampment in the Roman province of Pannonia. A centurion dreaming of home and retirement is uneasy, and acting on his premonition, he buries a pot filled with the legion’s pay: “You will be a man’s future, he thought.” The night brings a barbarian attack and the coins lie in their grave for almost two thousand years until they are dug up by three children half-heartedly participating in a student work day in the fields.

Such is the disarmingly simple beginning. The three children, Dorján, János and Nevena, are lifelong friends: the two boys plan to study engineering together; both admire Nevena, but János is determined to marry her some day. The discovery of the coins, though, immediately sets them at odds. Nevena wants to hand them in to the authorities; János wants to keep them. “We’re filthy rich,” he says. “Never again will we live under the frog’s ass.” The two boys decide to bury the coins in a tin containing a little money they have acquired.

The crack in their relationship caused by this dispute is the start of a relentless disintegration. János disappears, and so do the Roman coins. The mystery fosters jealousy and suspicion and terrible guilt. It unravels official brutality, old grudges, reprisals dating back to the war, a menacing litany of corruption and social inequality concealed behind the hierarchy and codes of the isolated village.

Lundrigan also shows us the other side of the coin. We see the fellowship of the women of the village, their strength in the face of adversity, through the relationship between the widow Gitta and Zsuzsi, Dorján’s grandmother. Tibor, a handicapped boy with good reason to hate János, is revealed as a kind neighbour. Even Komandant Dobrica, vile as he is, shines as a parent compared to his snobbish wife.

There are no winners in these conflicts and revelations, just survivors. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the irony of the scene where Gitta, János’ bereaved mother, unaware of the havoc he has wrought in her life, walks with the Komandant in the orchard at his ruined childhood home. Gitta thinks nothing will really change: “If they waited long enough, she was certain, everything would be back as it was before.” She is partly right; deception and betrayal have a very long half-life.

The author draws us through the labyrinth of village life, directing our attention to different characters in turn as their pasts collide with their present to mangle their future. The reader follows the dissection of these lives with a kind of fascinated horror—there is little comfort to be found—but the telling is so intense and the writing so compelling there can be no question of setting it aside before the end.

Margaret Thompson is a retired English teacher and past president of the Federation of BC Writers.  Her seventh book, a novel entitled The Cuckoo’s Child, will be a Spring 2014 publication.