The book focuses on Estella, the youngest daughter of
Oliver and Beatrice Diamond. When she is
five years old, Estella finds some letters and learns that her father, a
successful brick-factory owner, was once briefly married to Salina, an independent
and unconventional woman who aspired to be a ceramics artist. Raised by her mother Beatrice, a very
traditional woman, Estella often wishes she had been raised by Salina. She too longs to be independent, but her
plans are always derailed by the needs of her family and, though she does have
a career as a teacher, she always reverts to the role of a dutiful
daughter.
The novel begins in 1902 when Estella and Oliver
first meet and ends in the present after “the Raptors had won the
championship.” It begins in the Ottawa
Valley but soon moves to Regina and northern Saskatchewan.
The contrast between Salina and Beatrice is
striking. Salina has an “independent
manner” and does not want a “predictable life.”
She wonders how a young woman like herself can “become what she dreams
of being.” She runs away from home and
sets off for Europe. Beatrice, on the
other hand, is anything but daring. When
she and Oliver move to western Canada, she is “unsettled by this wilderness,
and she felt a longing for quiet, conventional Bryne Corners, Ontario, and the
house she had grown up in.” Whereas
Salina was “a free spirit and a suffragist,” Beatrice “was determined to adapt
as well as any woman to the role of wife and mother” and vows to offer Oliver
“stability and a well-kept home.”
How could Oliver be attracted to two such very
different women? Would Oliver and Salina
have been happy together when Salina was “not likely a woman who would have
adapted well to being a homemaker”?
Certainly, Estella suspects that were Salina her mother, she would have
encouraged her independent spirit.
Certainly, Estella is not encouraged to pursue a
career other than marriage. Oliver
proves to be a traditional man who expects his sons to work in the family
business but makes no room for his daughter; “he’d not taken his daughter
seriously, and that consequence was her career as a mathematics teacher – a
perfectly good career, but not a dream career.”
He never really considers her dreams, though he did once write to Salina
that he has separated from his family because they have no dreams “and without
dreams there is no joy.” Because she is
female and because she is single, Estella is expected to put her family’s needs
first, so at different times, she ends up a caregiver to a brother, her mother,
and her father. Advancing into an administrative role at school is not
possible “because her teaching record had too many interruptions when she’d
taken leaves to care for her brother, and her mother and . . . ” Eventually, Estella takes steps to assert
herself in the family business but there are unforeseen consequences and in the
end she asks “Had it been worth it?”
This book reminded me of another I recently
read: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett.
Just as Cyril makes the decisions about the house he and Elna will have,
Oliver does not ask Beatrice what she would like in a house: “He seemed to believe he knew what a married
woman would want.” Estella and Maeve are
in similar positions; they are educated but the possibility of advanced
education is never considered by their fathers.
Though Estella does not live a stellar life that
would befit her name, she is the star of the book. She emerges as a fully developed
character. At times I found myself
cheering for her when she did something daring and at other times, I could have
cried in frustration as she coasted through life. Perhaps because I’m older, I really liked
the older Estella. Her questioning the
meaning of her life and her legacy is something with which I can identify.
The novel does not cover new ground. Many other books have showcased the limited
opportunities for women because of societal expectations. The
Diamond House begins well but the pace really slows down (like Estella’s
life perhaps). Momentum picks up towards
the end, but the middle is a slog. A bit
of judicious revision/editing would have this book shining more like the
diamond in its title.
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