Tag Archives: historical fiction

December 20, 2014 · 7:19 pm

Emancipation Day: Race, Passing and Why Read Historical Fiction

I grew up in a small town. Think 800 people. Think rural Ontario. Think white. For a couple of elections, we were the only riding to vote for a Reform Party (the precursor to the Conservative party) candidate in all of Ontario. So imagine the Stop Racism! campaign in my elementary school: when all of my class, including the two black kids in the school (siblings), staged an assembly to declare to the rest of the school that we were stopping! racism! And I really did feel like we were – united – putting an end to the scourge. Whatever it was. Wherever it might be. Around the same time (or perhaps only in my memory) I read Underground to Canada, a YA novel about the underground railroad and Canada’s role in ‘saving’ and ‘rescuing’ American slaves (imagine my dismay in reading The Book of Negroes to be reminded again that the sainted image of Canada as a safehaven might be a tiny bit (just a smidge) exaggerated). All this to say I grew up with an idea that not only was racism somewhere else (America), but race was somewhere else (I certainly didn’t have one).

As I’ve grown this taken-for-grantedness about my race – and race in general – has, of course, changed with the introduction of different experiences, people (and critical theory). And has changed (most perhaps) in the reading of fiction. For instance, in a fourth year seminar (with the great M O’C) I read Nella Larsen’s Passing which shares plot threads and thematic questions with Wayne Grady’s Emancipation Day: what is the difference between race enacted and race inherited? race felt and race imposed? I hadn’t considered the set of questions in this way before reading Larsen, it hadn’t occurred to me that race might be something you could put on yourself, or have put on you by others. Or that being recognized as white – and being seamlessly comfortable being recognized this way – afforded all sorts of privileges, recognized and invisible.

All that said, I’m not sure I’d recommend Grady’s Emancipation Day. While there’s a central conflict – what will happen when Jack(son)’s new white wife discovers that his family is black? – and some interesting detours in discussions of race and music, I wasn’t, on the whole, all that invested in Jack and his journey (perhaps because Jack is an unlikeable character, or maybe because I’m an unsympathetic reader). Though maybe Emancipation Day is worth a read as historical fiction – set at the end of WWII in Newfoundland (not yet part of Canada), Windsor and Detroit – its imagining of post-war era gender politics and economies is rich, so too, its explicit engagement with the ways Canadian (Windsor) race relations differ and don’t from American (Detroit). Or maybe not. (Maybe instead you should read one of Lawrence Hill’s other amazing books, Any Known Blood, which asks – and tries to answer – many of these same questions in a (for me) more engaging or nuanced ways. Just saying.)

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April 21, 2014 · 11:33 am

Us Conductors: Beautiful writing, extraordinary narration

You will want to read Sean Michaels’ *Us Conductors* as soon as you can (in April of 2014) both because it is a brilliant novel and because everyone will be talking about it and you’re going to want to be hip and have already read the latest ‘hot’ book. Continue reading →

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Filed under Canadian Literature, Erin's Favourite Books, Fiction, Giller prize, Historical Fiction, Prize Winner

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March 14, 2014 · 12:57 pm

All the Broken Things: Seeing

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s All the Broken Things centres around the bildungsroman story of Bo, a boy who wrestles bears  and other boys, cares for his sister (Orange) and mother and navigates Vietnamese, refugee identities in 1970s Canada. Bo’s coming of age is as much about coming into his own sense of self as it is (and perhaps this is always the case in this genre) coming to understand that the people around him are as complex and flawed as he is.

As the title suggests, the novel is occupied with exploring questions around what/who is broken and whether these broken things and people need and want fixing, and also, whether such repair is ever possible. These questions get taken up in by the character of Teacher who attempts, over and over, to atone for her involvement in the production of Agent Orange by “saving” Bo and his family (in a somewhat heavy-handed move, Teacher works with a Church organization so that the ‘saving’ is as much about providing material shelter as it is rescuing of souls). At one point Bo remarks on Teacher’s efforts, noting that her attempts shame him – not in the actual acts, but in the idea that what is broken ought to be, or can be, fixed.

The relationship mirrors others in the novel – a classmate, Emily – in the paternalism of the white Canadian rescuing the refugee from his trauma and poverty. It is refreshing then, to find a character like Max – the owner of a carnival freakshow interested in employing Bo as a bear-fighter – who (at first, at least) nakedly exploits Bo. The reader finds this exploitation oddly refreshing as it’s not couched or obscured by rhetoric of benevolence and rescue. The ideas of rescue get further complicated in the relationship between Bo and Bear as the needs of the two and the reliance of each on the other explore exploitation and power in human-animal relationships.

Much like the heavy-handedness of Teachers allegiance with the Church, the metaphors in the novel feel a bit heavy: Bo’s fear of water; the parallels between Bear and Orange; the demand that Orange be kept hidden, inside. These are metaphors that get, at times, overplayed in ways that made this reader feel less inclined to think carefully about their meaning. It’s as if the predictable arrival of a water/drowning metaphor that in some ways exonerates the reader from having to think too carefully about the implications and effects of the metaphor because it gets recognized as “the water metaphor” instead of the thing it is meant to be signifying (helplessness, loneliness). This heaviness comes about in part, I think, from overuse and from a sort of ponderous, solemic introduction of the metaphor, a quiet-on-the-set feel that interrupts, rather than deepens.

The one metaphorical space that I did feel compelled by was the carnival. The layering of spectacle, the ideas of who watches and who is seen, the confusion of expectations/reality of what we think we see and how the object of our viewing sees her/him/itself gets exploded and refracted in exciting and unsettling ways.

In the Author’s Note that precedes the novel the reader is alerted that the most “fantastical” moments in the novel are those that are “really true” – the production of Agent Orange in Elimra, Ontario; the freak-shows at the CNE until the late 70s; bear-wrestling. In an odd parallel to the  “Believe it or Not” rhetoric of the freak-show/carnvial itself, the author’s note serve as an (uncomfortable) call to the reader to be amazed (and entertained?) by the spectacle of historical fiction. While it’s clear from the narration and characterization of Bo that we are not, in fact, meant to be entertained by the history so much as troubled and unsettled, the Author’s Note in juxtaposition to the carnival metaphor/theme did, for me at least, raise questions about the spectacle – see history different! – elements of historical fiction that I had not considered before.

All this to say it’s a provocative novel with a rich exploration of Canadian history, individual identity, human-animal relationships and how we see/do not see, fix/do not fix those we imagine to be “broken.”

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January 20, 2014 · 3:18 pm

Conspiracy of Paper: Cheque that

The trouble with me is that I’m an arrogant reader. Particularly when I’m reading a mystery. I think that because I’m paying attention I’ll sort out the mystery and so this post might otherwise be titled “chagrin.” Chagrin because I thought I’d solved the mystery in David Liss’s brilliantly enjoyable *A Conspiracy of Paper* : a mystery set in London in the 1710s as the stock market is developing and the first (ever!) stock market crash takes place. Around page 300 (of a rough 450) I’d decided that I had it all worked out and so I resolved to make it through to the end to have my conclusion validated by the book. ONLY TO BE WRONG. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, realizing I’d misread the signs. Though our protagonist Benjamin Weaver – a former boxer, turned private detective/thug – isn’t entirely sure by the end of the book that the murderer/conspirator/mastermind really is who he thinks he is. So! Maybe I’m right after all?

And this is the delight of the well wrought mystery. The unravelling of threads reveals not a single person behind the curtain, but rather a set of societal conditions that allowed such crimes to take place that anyone (perhaps) could have been the perpetrator given the right opportunity. That is to say, one person pulled the trigger, but a hundred could have. Moreover Liss’s novel is brilliant for showing how easy it might be for anyone of the characters to have slipped into pulling the trigger, that we are all but a hairs breath – or an opportunity – away from being thieves and killers. That with proper motivation and opportunity we’d all easily fill the role. That the line between virtue and crime is as easily crossed as it is misapprehended.

So the book gives you a host of suspicious characters – lovers, family, friends and supposed enemies – and has each of them vacillate between trustworthy and unreliability. Our protagonist himself, towards the end of the novel, falls under the reader’s suspicion in a masterful play of the unreliable narrator. The story is, after all a first person memoir recounted at many years distance, and this reader couldn’t help but wonder if the usual shades of self-aggrandizing truth that ought to be suspected in a first person narrative weren’t being underdrawn in suspicious ways.

The one way I wasn’t arrogant in this reading is that I am entirely ignorant of all things stock market, and moreover intimidated by economics, investments, stocks, etc.  In another brilliant move Liss anticipates this (potential) discomfort with the stock market among his readers and so positions his protagonist as similarly ignorant and so a suitable surrogate to ask the obvious and naive questions. Through Weaver we explore the history of the stock market without the burden of overly technical or alienating facts or details, instead we get repeated explanations of the significance of such and such an event or practice through his Uncle or best friend. This gentle introduction to the history makes it both enjoyable and accessible, to the extent that I think I have a decent grasp of not only the emergence of the stock market, but a confidence enough to translate the historical circumstances to the present to ask questions about the abstraction of currency: talk to me about Bitcoin! I have thoughts now. Maybe.

Oh and I should say, too, that the narrative is written – as you’d expect – in the (supposed) diction and phrasing of eighteenth century London. So I learned some new words and had to catch myself as I started inserting ‘countenance’ into everyday conversation: always a joy.

All this to say an entirely enjoyable read – captivating mystery, thoughtful pacing and introduction of historical details and compelling (enough) characters.

 

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