Tag Archives: canadian literature

February 26, 2010 · 11:35 pm

Come, Thou Tortoise: A lot of good

There is a lot to love about Come, Thou Tortoise. The plot, for one, unfolds so sweetly, so sensitively and with such care for the first person narrator, Audrey. Audrey herself is a bit much. In fact my only complaint about the novel is her narrative voice. Much like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Audrey’s narrative voice is at first engaging and certainly memorable, but soon comes to be irksome – far too many short sentences, far too many. Her playful musings (and puns) do at times distract, and I found myself waiting through the first 3/4 of the novel for whatever cognitive ailment she has to be revealed. How can a grown woman not realize mice do not live twenty years? And really, really not realize?

That said, there are some really beautiful plot moments. Details, descriptions, dialogue that capture the imagination. The small town setting in Newfoundland is perfect (as is the scene when Audrey is surprised that her pilot has heard of St.John’s). The characters are rich and delightful. The voice of the tortoise is (perhaps surprisingly) exactly what I think a tortoise might sound like: altogether thoughtful. Sad narrative, yes, but sad in a way that feels neither insincere, nor urgently pressing towards a resolution in happiness. A sadness that is allowed to just be sad with the full knowledge that these characters care so much for one another that the sadness might just be bearable, and for the reader, Oddly enjoyable.

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February 19, 2010 · 11:36 pm

Salt Fish Girl: Borderline

Larissa Lai’s second novel, Salt Fish Girl, combines history and fantasy in an involving speculative fiction. Without revealing too much about the plot, the perspectives of the two protagonists, the 2040s Miranda and 1800s Nu Wa, are interwoven in an exploration of sexual desire, genetic modification, immigration and family responsibility.

The strength of the novel comes from its richly imagined future scenes. So much so that the speculative future reads as a much more compelling and realized time than the historical one (when one might expect depth in detail through research). The future protagonist, Miranda, also controls a stronger narrative voice and sense of character motivation and development.

The chapters set in the past are not disappointing, but rely too heavily on magic realism, without sufficient grounding in either time or place (something the future chapters do quite well). Further, these sections lack – with the exception of the meeting of Salt Fish Girl – concrete plot experiences, and so ‘float’ in a wishy-washy space of over-stated symbolism.

The symbolism is my chief complaint. Lai needs to trust her reader to interpret and analyze the text. As it is, the combination of an abundance of heavy handed symbolic references and (purposefully?) ambiguous mythic references  leave the reader at one and the same time frustrated with the emphatic symbolism and confused by the seemingly inexplicable plot events.

That said, the time changes and the Miranda plot are engaging and as a consequence the book reads quickly and for the most part, enjoyably – if you can get past the symbol saturation and occasionally disorienting plot elements.

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January 15, 2010 · 12:06 am

A Discovery of Strangers: Cannibal Consumption

Rudy Wiebe twice won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, first for The Temptations of Big Bear and then again for A Discovery of Strangers. In both novels Wiebe imagines historical events from perspectives not traditionally represented in historical discourse: the trial of Big Bear and the first Franklin expedition, respectively.

I’ve read A Discovery of Strangers three times now, and this last time is the first that I paid much attention. Something about Wiebe lulls me. I suspect the constantly shifting point of view and abrupt changes in chronological sequence are distracting, but his word choice is (oddly) poetic and so, for the first two reads, I lost a lot of the subtleties. This time around I’m reading with intent (take that Atwood), reading with the intent to write twenty odd pages about the book, and so reading with a close and careful eye. It has given me a sinus headache (actually I suspect the winter and germs are responsible for that).

There is much for the attentive eye to notice: the dominance of circles; the repeated use of both ‘discover’ and ‘strangely’ in reference to the ways characters speak; descriptions of the arctic ice as ‘eating’ or ‘consuming’; references to skin – the thickness, colour and texture of it. And so much to do with eating.

I noticed the eating before, but on this read I noticed it in new places. Sex is described as eating, the landscape is described as eating, the English explorers are (of course and always) described as eating, the animals eat, the children eat, the rocks and the forest and the water eats. And people eat one another.

The novel poses several questions directly: what are the explorers looking for? What do they hope to find? And. What are our responsibilities to one another? What does community require?

The answers might be found in the imagery, the symbols, the dialogic and polyphonic structure. Or perhaps there are no direct answers, rather an insistence that we readers ‘eat’ too: the novel, the narrative, and in eating incorporate the voices and this story into ourselves, and perhaps then find something approximating answers – or perhaps just satiation.

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January 6, 2010 · 12:42 am

Ivan E. Coyote: Bow Grip, Close to Spider Man – I fall in love

I didn’t want to read Bow River. It had a tough spine, and I hate books with a tough spine. But it was a Christmas gift from my brother, and I like to read books that are given to me so I can thank the person and mean it. So I read it. And I owe my brother. Owe him something awesome, because Ivan E. Coyote hooked me from page one and held me the whole way through, and has me still I think.

Bow River, Coyote’s first novel, introduces the reader to Joey a year after his wife has left him for another woman. He is forced to take a vacation because his mother is threatening him with Prozac and he has a car that belongs to another man and he needs to return it. The novel covers a week in Joey’s life, and a week is not – not nearly – enough. He is a character so endearing and so honest that I’ve spent the last few days wondering whether by moving to a small town in Alberta I might find my own Joey. And it’s not just him! The characters that surround him are delightful and so perfectly drawn that I could imagine both exactly who they are and somehow still think of a dozen people they remind me of.

Let me now say something about short stories. I don’t read short stories. Not unless I have to. But I put down Bow River and immediately picked up Coyote’s 2000 collection, Close to Spider Man. My problem with short stories is that you just get a snippet. Just a little tease of a character or a plot, and then you’re cut off. I fall in love in that I really and truly care about well written characters, but with short stories I’m constantly being separated from the characters I have been introduced to. Happily, Coyote’s collection follows one woman and uses one (more or less) consistent narrative voice. I have every intention of going to the library tomorrow to check out the remaining three collections. Those I suppose I’d be wise to ration them, as there’s a good chance I’ll be sulky and sad when my available Coyote stock disappears. Or maybe I’ll take a break, read something else, and just let these two stunning works roll around in my head for awhile. In any event, let’s hope my string of excellent reads continues.

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