Review of THE TIDAL ZONE by Sarah Moss

 4 Stars

2020 was my year for reading Maggie O’Farrell; 2021 is becoming my year for reading Sarah Moss.  After being impressed with her Ghost Wall and Summerwater, I thought I’d read one of her earlier novels.

The novel’s narrator is Adam Goldschmidt, an underemployed academic and stay-at-home dad.  His wife Emma is a chronically stressed, overworked, and exhausted doctor so Adam is the primary caregiver to 15-year-old Miriam and 8-year-old Rose.  When not taking care of the household (shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry) and the girls’ activities, he is writing a guidebook on the post-war reconstruction of Coventry cathedral. 

One day Miriam collapses at school.  She is revived and hospitalized for a time to determine why a healthy teenager would suffer cardiac arrest.  Since the cause cannot be determined, the family has to adapt to living with the possibility that Miriam might again stop breathing at any time.  The book focuses on life’s impermanence and learning to live with that uncertainty:  “how can we live once we have understood that any or all of us may be killed while tying our shoes or going up the stairs?  While reading a novel, or writing one?” 

Miriam must face the possibility of death but the novel focuses more on Adam’s reaction to “the new reality in which death stood in the corner of every room and came to breathe over my shoulder whenever I took my eye off him.”  As expected, he worries and struggles not to be overprotective but to give Miriam “her own tidal zone.”  Like the parents of a newborn, he regularly checks that his daughters are breathing.  Miriam has had a brush with death and their safe world has been shattered, but a parent’s daily responsibilities continue:  “Everything is paused, except that Rose still needs to go to school and to eat her meals, and the laundry must still be done and the bathroom cleaned.”

Adam finds some comfort in being part of a global web of suffering parents:  “It is normal for children to die.  Look at Syria, at Palestine, at Eritrea and Somalia.  Look at the tidelines of beaches in Italy and Greece.  Look, while we’re on the subject, at certain parts of Chicago and Los Angeles.”  He tells Emma that “’the way things are for us now is the normal one, globally and historically.  It’s everyone else who’s anomalous.  Everyone who doesn’t think it could happen to them. . . . It comforts me to think that most parents in most of time and most of the world have lived with this fear as a matter of course.’” 

The message is that we are all fragile and though we should acknowledge the possibility of sudden death, we should not let it dominate our lives:  “there is death and suffering and evil” but “there is beauty” too.  Though we should appreciate life and health and life’s ordinary extraordinariness, “May we forget.  It is a pity that the things we learn in crisis are all to be found on fridge magnets and greeting cards:  seize the day, savour the moment, tell your love – May we live long enough to despise the clichés again, may we heal enough to take for granted sky and water and light, because the state of blind gratitude for breath and blood is not a position of intelligence.”  We must continue living because “’You can’t go round not loving things because they’ll die.’” 

Interspersed with the family narrative are two other stories of rebuilding and moving forward after a catastrophe:  we learn how Coventry cathedral was designed and reconstructed after being bombed during World War II and about Adam’s father’s life in the U.S. after his Jewish parents “crossed the seas to escape bad times.”

Readers in England will undoubtedly note the many criticisms of the National Health Service, the publicly funded healthcare system.  Emma comments that the NHs is so stretched that “’the only people who get treatment are the ones who aren’t safe’” and “’the whole system is now running on the last dregs of the goodwill of burnt-out doctors.’”  Adam notes the injustice “that we are all in a country that pays young women more to impersonate elves in a shop than to give expert care to critically ill children.”

The book shows role-reversal parenting.  It is the woman who is the workaholic who is usually home late and even when home is working.  Adam is usually the only father dropping off and picking up a child at school, and faces challenges because of his gender.  For example, he takes Rose to a swimming pool for a birthday party and has to rely on the help of another woman:  “the father of daughters too young to be sent alone into the women’s changing room . . . must take them with him into the men’s room.  Even stay-at-home dads who know how to use the delicates cycle on the washing machine and clean a toilet before it needs doing can’t go into the women’s changing room.  The power dynamic between small girls and a room full of naked men is not . . . the obvious way round.”  When he waits in the lobby and watches the pool to make certain Rose has come through the changing room to the pool, he is told, “’Some of the mums don’t think it’s right, a man standing there watching the kiddies like that.’”

 Like the other Sarah Moss novels, this one is thought-provoking.  Though it touches on serious topics, there is humour.  And it is so beautifully written and breathtakingly realistic!

Review of THE ASH MUSEUM by Rebecca Smith

4 Stars 

This novel covers five generations of the Ash family over a period of one hundred years; though England is home for the Ashes, there are forays to Canada and India; in fact, two members of the second generation are born in Canada and two members of the third generation are born in India.

The book is about the search for somewhere to feel at home.  In the early twentieth century, Emmeline and Edward try to make a “life as homesteaders” in Canada, but Emmeline finds “The sky was too big.  The land stretched away too far.”  Their grandson Jay, born in India, is brought to England as a teenager.  Though England is his home and he refuses to discuss his childhood in India, he is always looking for “his view”.  His situation is like that of a vagrant pelican seen by Jay’s daughter Emmie and granddaughter Jasmine:  “that pelican, a vagrant, all alone in the wrong country.  What could a vagrant pelican do?  Where would it live?  Was it always on a hopeless quest for another of its kind?”  Emmie, because she is of mixed race, encounters prejudice as a schoolgirl and wants to be like the rhododendrons and azaleas:  “The flowers seemed at home and part of the English forest though their ancestors had come from the Himalayas.”

As the title suggests, the book is organized like a visit to a museum.  There are many short chapters, each one based on an artifact that might have found its way to a museum of the Ash family.  As the introduction makes clear, the tour is not arranged chronologically:  “Our guide offers a path through the museum that we hope visitors will find enjoyable and enlightening.  If you wish to view the displays chronologically . . . you will have to start elsewhere.”  This arrangement is appropriate because it is disorienting at times for the reader, thereby mirroring the disorientation felt by the characters who suffer traumatic loss (a parent, a spouse, a home) and must find a way to proceed. 

The non-chronological structure also allows the reader to see connections that might otherwise be less obvious.  I loved the common interests that appear in various generations.  Emmie and her great-aunt both work in a library.  Emmie and her paternal grandmother Josmi collect pieces of broken china.  Objects are passed down through the family so we see how Emmeline receives a fur coat and how it is eventually used by her great-granddaughter. 

The reader is emotionally engaged in various ways.  Josmi’s fate is heart-wrenching, and Emmie’s experiences at school will shock and anger.  There is sadness because life does not work out for all characters as they might wish, and several people experience tragedy.  But there is also romance, sometimes totally unexpected.  And there is also humour; I especially enjoyed a chapter devoted to Margaret.  She sees a busker with a sign “Spare Change Pleaz” and she thinks, “How could one know if one’s change was actually spare?  The busker was underselling himself too.  If he hadn’t had that sign, people might have been inclined to drop notes rather than coins into his hat.  And he should have had a comma before ‘please’ and spelled it correctly.”

Several issues are examined.  For instance, colonialism is addressed:  “The whole history of mankind . . . is a story of conquering and stealing and taking and selling, of finding ways to dominate, to enclose, and to slaughter.”  Emmie’s thoughts are noteworthy on this topic:  “It was good, Emmie thought, that her [English] grandpa had been one of the people who’d helped make India a great nation, although if it had already been one when England was full of savages, there must have been a time when things went wrong.”  Racism is addressed.  The comments made by Audrey Pheasant and Sue Namey are clearly racist.  Emmie, however, is not subjected to the jeers and physical attacks that a classmate faces:  “Was it because she was a paler shade of brown?  Was it because she was a girl, and so people treated her more kindly or saw her as less of a threat?  Could it have been because people had seen her [white] mum?”

There are many characters, but it is not difficult to differentiate them.  Some I wish had been more developed.  James, for instance, takes Josmi, an Indian woman, as a lover and has two children with her.  He tells her he loves her but he never tells his family about her.  Though she appears in a picture of dancers, James writes to his mother, “You wanted to know who the dancers in the photograph were – those dancers are nobody.”  Did he love Josmi?  Was he too cowardly to say anything to his family?  Was he trying to spare the feelings of Lucinda who was viewed as his intended wife?  Lucinda’s behaviour towards James’ children is admirable, but she seems almost too good to be believable.

This is a very enjoyable read.  It has interesting characters to whom the reader can relate, addresses important issues, and is emotionally engaging.  I enjoy visiting museums so this tour of a family’s artifacts was perfect for me.

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher.

Review of AN OLD, COLD GRAVE by Iona Whishaw

 3.5 Stars

The third book in the Lane Winslow mystery series begins with the discovery of human remains buried on top of a neighbour’s root cellar.  The skeleton is believed to belong to a child buried about 35 years earlier.  Inspector Darling asks Lane to speak to the residents of King’s Cove to help identify the child.  Attention quickly focuses on the Anscomb family who left with their many children shortly after the building of the root cellar in 1910.  Flashbacks give the reader knowledge unknown to Lane and the police, and it becomes clear that not everyone in the tiny community is forthcoming with important information. 

There are two sub-plots.  One involves a young girl who vandalizes a local saw mill.  The other, of course, is the relationship between Lane and Darling.  This latter plot is also featured in the first two books in the series; fortunately, this third book brings a resolution of sorts. 

I enjoyed reading about the investigation of a cold case.  Having watched Cold Case on television and having read Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q books and others, it is intriguing to see how a cold case would have been approached in 1947.  Forensics as we know it now did not exist, so there is so much that remains unknown about the human remains. 

As in the previous book, this one touches on historical events.  This time the reader learns about British Home Children, impoverished children sent to Canada.  The novel explores what happened to some of those children.  There is also considerable discussion of gender inequality; a young girl rails at the lack of options she is given for her future. 

By the third book, Lane’s character is well established, and the reader is not surprised at her behaviour.  More than once her determination leads her into difficulty; she even acknowledges that her “single-mindedness . . . made Darling uneasy.  It led to a lack of caution.”  Gladys Hughes and her daughters Gwen and Mabel appear in the other books, but they are more central in this one, so there is more character development of them.  I’m convinced that if I were ever to meet these fictional characters, I’d recognize them immediately.

This is another pleasant read.  Especially because of the last chapter, I’m interested in following up on what awaits Lane in the next book.  This is a mystery series that maintains the reader’s interest. 

Review of DEATH IN A DARKENING MIST by Iona Whishaw

 3.5 Stars

Last year I read the first book in the Lane Winslow historical mystery series set in King’s Cove in interior British Columbia (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2020/03/review-of-killer-in-kings-cove-by-iona.html).  I had been meaning to get back to the series because the first book showed promise, so when I was contacted by the publishing company, I accepted the offer of the next two books in the series in return for honest reviews.  So here’s my review of the second installment; my review of the third book will be posted in four days. 

In December of 1946, Lane is at a local hot springs when the body of a murdered man is discovered.  The victim is a Russian who was living among the Doukhobors.  Lane’s assistance is required because, having grown up in Latvia, she speaks Russian and so can serve as a translator.  As the investigation is continued by Inspector Darling and Constable Ames, knowledge she acquired while working for British Secret Intelligence during the war provides valuable insight. 

There are two sub-plots.  One involves the embezzlement of money from accounts at the local bank.  The second is the developing relationship between Lane and Inspector Darling. 

As would be expected, there is further development of Lane.  She is intelligent, compassionate and possesses a good sense of humour.  She is also very independent and determined; these latter traits often lead her into difficulty and cause consternation in Darling because she dashes in heedlessly and then realizes she should have waited for the police.  She’d be a terrible police officer because she tends not to wait for backup. 

The characters introduced in the first novel, A Killer in King’s Cove, reappear.  The village is populated with interesting, quirky people and readers familiar with them from the first book will enjoy seeing them again.  The banter between Darling and Ames adds humour, and the conversations, often awkward, between Lane and Darling are always interesting. 

I appreciated the references to historical events like the internment of Japanese-Canadians and the government’s treatment of the Doukhobors.  I was inspired to do some additional research on the latter group about which I knew little.  Constable Ames decides that Lane Winslow is Wonder Woman and that had me doing fact checking; the fictional superhero would indeed have been known because she was created during World War II.

There is one chapter, Chapter 21, which has a problem with chronology.  In Chapter 17, Lane visits the bank and opens an account before she meets with Darling and Ames in Chapters 18, 19, and 20.  In Chapter 21, we learn “there had been withdrawals three different times, quite close together, starting the day after [Lane had] made the deposit” . . . though “The last time she’d been in was when she had deposited the money.”  Then, in Chapter 22, Darling speculates that Lane “should have gotten home by now” after opening the account and after meeting with them as described in Chapters 17 – 20.  This lapse is irksome; it should have been noticed in the editing process.

This can be classified as a cozy historical mystery but it does have some elements of a spy thriller.  I imagine these latter elements will continue as there is repeated reference to not being able to escape the past:  “It was not quite enough to imagine one could escape to the back of beyond . . . and live an idyllic life free of every connection with the past” and “It does not matter what we do, she thought.  What we wish for, what we believe.  Fate will try, willy-nilly, to draw us along some appointed road.”

I’m off to read the next book to see what next lies in wait for Lane Winslow.  (Just as I began reading this novel, an article written by Iona Whishaw came to my attention; it indicates that Lane was inspired by the author’s mother:  https://crimereads.com/a-family-of-spies/).

Review of UNSETTLED GROUND by Claire Fuller (New Release)

4 Stars 

This novel grabbed my interest from its first sentences, describing a snowfall in luminous prose, and wouldn’t let go. 

Jeanie and Julius Seeder are 51-year-old fraternal twins living with their mother Dot in a dilapidated cottage in rural England.  Though isolated and poor, they are content.  Then Dot dies suddenly, and the outside world intrudes and threatens their sanctuary.  They must learn to adapt and fend for themselves as they quickly learn that the world Dot had constructed for them was built on deception and manipulation.

Just as the ground unsettles beneath the twins’ lives, the reader will find the book unsettling.  The twins are hampered in their ability to deal with the outside world.  Julius suffers from travel sickness so being in a motorized vehicle is untenable; with limited education, he can take only menial jobs and only those which he can reach by bicycle.  Because of a heart condition which left her frail, Jeanie attended school only sporadically and is functionally illiterate.  They are vulnerable, and there are people who move in quickly to exploit their vulnerability.  As they are repeatedly victimized, I felt like I was reading a Thomas Hardy novel. 

This is very much a novel of character.  Though both Julius and Jeanie’s perspectives are included, Jeanie is more of a focus.  Because of her educational limitations and her lack of contact with the outside world, she lacks some basic life skills needed in the modern world and is uncomfortable outside her home:  Jeanie “craves home, quiet and security.”   Nonetheless, she engages with others as she must and fights to maintain her dignity and become more independent.  Though trapped by circumstances, she doesn’t let herself succumb to the increasingly hopeless situation in which she finds herself and shows herself to be both strong and brave.  The reader cannot but cheer for Jeanie even while sometimes being frustrated with her actions. 

Another character who is developed is Dot.  From the beginning it is made clear that she has secrets; as she suffers a stroke in the first chapter, she thinks about “that unmentionable-at-home man” who occasionally sleeps with her and her last thought is about “the biggest lie of all.”  The reader will certainly guess many of her secrets before her children learn them, but it’s not the nature of the secrets but her motivation that is of most interest.  I found myself increasingly angry with Dot for limiting her children’s opportunities.  Her conversation with Jeanie about the risks of pregnancy for someone with her heart condition and her casual mentioning to her son that she saw a friend of his kissing a man outside the pub do not portray Dot in a positive light.  A book club could have a great discussion about Dot’s choices:  Does her love for her children excuse her manipulation?  Does her pride keep her from taking actions that would have made her children’s lives easier?  What role do selfishness and a fear of loneliness play in her behaviour?  Was Dot the good woman everyone says she was?

Music is a very important source of comfort to both Julius and Jeanie and serves as a bond between them.  Dot also played an instrument and the twins fondly remember the home concerts with the three of them.  It becomes obvious that Jeanie is especially musically talented, and it is in this area that we see the harm that can be done by parents.

Suspense is built slowly but there is little doubt that something terrible is going to happen.  For example, the visitors to the cottage and spinney become more and more threatening, and Jeanie and Julius’ situation becomes more and more dire.  And then when a confrontation does happen, what will the long-term outcome be?

The book is slow-paced and generally bleak and oppressive, but the development of characters is exceptional and, fortunately, the ending offers some hope.  The novel certainly inspires one to think of the long-term impact of secrets and lies. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.  The book will be released tomorrow, May 18.  

Review of THREE-POINT TURN by Caitlin Dunseith

 3.5 Stars

The novel focuses on three characters who meet by chance in the restaurant of a cheap motel.  Tom is there to meet Claire with whom he’s hoping to reset an on-again, off-again relationship.  Jacqueline is celebrating her one-year anniversary with her boyfriend; she wants to break up, but she has just discovered that she’s pregnant.  Richard is attending his daughter’s university convocation, but he’s also pre-occupied with his disintegrating marriage. 

While these three strangers are having breakfast, Gus, another diner, engages them in conversation.  He asks a lot of questions but also talks about his life, especially his relationship with his wife Nellie.  Though she is deceased, Gus speaks fondly about their years together raising a family.  What he tells Tom, Jacqueline, and Richard has them reflecting on their pasts and pondering their futures. 

Chapters alternate among the three characters.  The book opens with three chapters, each introducing one of the protagonists.  Then, in the fourth chapter, Tom walks into the restaurant and the first part of the conversation with Gus is detailed.  The following chapter is a flashback to Tom’s childhood.  In the sixth chapter, Jacqueline arrives for breakfast and the first part of the conversation with Gus is repeated.  The subsequent chapter is a flashback to her childhood.  In Chapter 8, Richard enters and the conversation is again reported before Chapter 9 flashes back to Richard’s adolescence.  This format is repeated twice more.  The repetition of chunks of conversation becomes tedious.  The characters do react differently to what Gus says and the reader does become privy to their thoughts about the others, but the word-for-word reiteration is annoying. 

A strength of the novel is characterization.  Each of the main characters emerges as a complex person with a satisfactory backstory which explains their motivations.  All of them are flawed, but they also possess redeeming qualities.  Because of her childhood, Jacqueline, for example, is superficial, concerned with image and the opinions of others; she wants a boyfriend who is handsome and rich.  On the other hand, she loves her mother very much.  Sometimes, the characters behave in ways that make them unlikeable.  Tom, for instance, is shallow; he judges everyone, especially women, on their physical appearance.  Yet his desires to please his parents and to make his grandmother proud are admirable.  Richard’s treatment of Arnaud is difficult to accept but were he not guilty and conflicted, he would not have acted in a way that resulted in the fateful accident. 

Influenced by the conversation with Gus, the three protagonists experience epiphanies and make decisions that impact their futures.  My issue is that I’m not convinced that one conversation can be so impactful.  I did appreciate, however, that all three have reasons to change since they are at crucial points in their lives.  The changes are realistic in that not everything becomes perfect.  Not all issues in all relationships are resolved.  For instance, Richard admits that his marriage “still wasn’t perfect” and his “relationship with Luc remained strained.”

I appreciated some of the touches of humour.  Some of Gus’ stories are funny, but I appreciated the lighter touches of comedy:  When Tom first sees Jacqueline, he thinks, “The girl was a five or a six at best in the looks department.  While she was thin and well-dressed, her facial features were asymmetrical, and she was extremely pale. . . . Tom saw her glance at him out of the corner of his eye a few times, which wasn’t unusual.  Women tended to hit on him wherever he went.  Keep dreaming, he thought.  She definitely wasn’t his type.”  Jacqueline notices Tom “sneak a glance at her.  As if, she thought.  It wasn’t that he was unattractive.  He wore a leather jacket and fitted dark-wash jeans with what looked like an expensive haircut.  And he definitely works out, she noted.  But he was too old.”  Not only are their thoughts very revealing of their priorities, but the dramatic irony is perfect. 

There are a couple of style issues that irritated me.  It is accepted practice to write a character’s thoughts in italics.  It is aggravating, therefore, to read sentences like, “This might be it, he thought” and “Well not this time, Jacqueline thought” and “My daughter’s age, Richard thought.”  Italics indicate internal thought so adding “he thought” is redundant.  Secondly, the novel is set in southwestern Ontario so using “college” to mean “university,” as Americans do, is annoying.  Arnaud does “his college homework” but he attends university?

This book has some of the weaknesses found in debut novels, but it has its strengths, especially characterization.  I would certainly read another offering from this writer.

Note:  I received a copy of the book from the author in return for an honest review.

Review of SUMMERWATER by Sarah Moss

 4 Stars

Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall made a real impression on me (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2020/11/review-of-ghost-wall-by-sarah-moss.html) so I thought I’d read another of her novels.  This one also left me impressed.

The book is set on the shores of a Scottish loch where holiday-goers rent cabins.  The duration is only one day, but days of pouring rain mean that people are again cooped up inside.  Through twelve third person stream-of-consciousness chapters, the reader becomes intimately familiar with twelve characters, inhabitants of the holiday cabins.  Family dynamics are revealed through the perspective of different family members; for example, a chapter may be devoted to a wife/mother and later another chapter will present the point of view of the husband/father or that of the couple’s child. 

A portrait of life at different stages is presented.  Young children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged parents, and retirees all make an appearance.  The inner lives of these characters are revealed:  their unfiltered thoughts and concerns.  A young woman, a feminist, is conflicted because of her sexual fantasies.  An elderly woman is suffering from memory loss.  Moody teenagers want privacy and time away from parents and siblings.  A child has to face nighttime fears.  Spouses want space from their partners.

What left me in awe is the authenticity of the various characters.  Each emerges as a distinct personality.  But what also becomes clear is that everyone is very self-absorbed, pre-occupied with his/her frustrations and worries.  There is often little connection among family members, but the inhabitants of each cabin are also isolated from people in the other cabins.  People observe their neighbours and pass judgment on their appearance or behaviour, but don’t interact with them.

Between the human chapters are brief interludes focused on nature, on what is happening around the humans.  There’s a doe with her fawn on the watch for wolves, birds and small creatures staying sheltered and hungry because of the unrelenting rain, and ants closing entrances to keep rain out of the anthill.  These sections emphasize that nature too has its concerns and evoke a feeling of timelessness.

Throughout the novel, there is a palpable sense of foreboding.  In the first nature interlude, there’s a comparison between the sounds of water and the sounds of blood and air in the human body and an ominous ending:  “You would notice soon enough, if it stopped.”   The first human chapter has a woman running a long distance alone despite her having been told by her doctor, “there’s to be no more running.  And if you really won’t take my advice at the very least don’t go far, don’t push yourself, don’t ever run alone.”  Something terrible will happen; the question is who will suffer.  Will it be the teenaged boy who goes kayaking and then realizes he might have gone too far as the wind and waves assault his craft? Will it be the teenaged girl who sneaks out to see a man illegally camping nearby?  Why is a man hiding in the woods and watching from the shadows every night at dusk?  And then one of the nature interludes ends with “There will be deaths by morning.” 

Despite the somber tone, there are touches of humour.  A woman’s thoughts wander during sex and she thinks, “you can’t expect a man to give you an orgasm if you keep thinking about particulates and genocides.”  A woman describes getting married “like voting in that whatever you choose the outcome will be at best mildly unsatisfactory four years down the line.”  A woman thinks she and her husband should have sex soon:  “even when she doesn’t feel like it, it seems to be good for them, like oiling your bike chain, doesn’t have to be fun but it stops things falling apart.” 

I know I’m not the first to compare this book to Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2018/03/review-of-reservoir-13-by-jon-mcgregor.html).  I found both novels totally immersive.  And the last chapter grabs the reader and won’t let go, even long after the book has been closed.

Review of SWIMMING BACK TO TROUT RIVER by Linda Rui Feng (New Release)

 4 Stars

This novel examines both how people are tethered by “the most ethereal of tendrils” to each other “in ways large or small, for a few minutes or for decades” and how individuals are insignificant in “the makings and transmutations of the world.”  Characters are brought together, tethered, at certain times, while also profoundly affected by social and political events “indifferent to human pain.”

Momo grows up in rural China in the village of Trout River.  He gains entrance to university where he meets Dawn, a budding violinist, who introduces him to classical music.  They lose touch after graduation when they are sent to work in different parts of the country.  Momo meets Cassia, a nurse, and the two marry and have a daughter Junie who is born without lower limbs.  Momo leaves for graduate school in the U.S., with plans that Cassia and Junie will eventually join him.  But Junie who has been raised by her paternal grandparents in Trout River doesn’t want to leave, and Cassia who has suffered several tragedies, does not see her future as Momo does.

The novel is narrated from the perspective of these four characters.  We see Momo’s life:  his university years, his marriage, and his adjustment to life in the U.S.  We see Dawn’s early years living with her grandfather, her love of music, and her pursuit of a career as a violinist.  We see Cassia’s meeting with Momo, her marriage, and her struggles with motherhood because of trauma from her past.  And we see Junie’s life with her grandparents who work to expand her world despite her physical limitations.

Momo, Dawn, and Cassia are all affected by China’s Cultural Revolution.  For years, Dawn cannot pursue a career as a violinist because even listening to Western music is a political crime:  “her ambition was the wrong tonality and color for the world.”  Both Momo and Cassia witness purges that affect them.    In essence, each of these must sacrifice dreams because of societal transformations happening around them. 

Each of the characters is well developed; their motivations are made clear so their actions are understandable.  What means the most to Momo is “to offer up his service to people ready to slaughter their donkey to send off a university student from their village.”  Dawn “’can’t bear to be alive without [music].’”  Cassia is emotionally scarred and is unable to move on; she knows that “Even a dull child . . . would have sensed her afflictions from the past and sussed out her ever-present presentiment of loss.”

The adults are all on journeys towards healing from loss and transforming into new lives.  Dawn takes drastic steps to pursue her career.  Cassia makes a momentous decision on her way to join her husband.  Momo works at bringing together his family which necessitates repairing his fractured relationship with Cassia.  The ending of the novel, though tinged with more tragedy, is hopeful as two people are tethered.

People may suffer in the face of a repressive regime indifferent to human suffering but people can also find what they need in a connection, however brief, with another person.  Just as Cassia as a child gives a stranger comfort without knowing it, Dawn meets people who made her career possible:  “’I washed up on these shores like a beached whale, and all of you . . . helped me grow my first pair of feet, and then helped me learn to stand on them.’”  Momo writes letters to a young violinist so two people meet “’By accident, or almost accident’” and “two commingled notes began to sound sweeter every second.”

I appreciated the author’s approach to explaining the Cultural Revolution.  She is not heavy-handed; instead, she inserts statements that say much in few words:  during this time, “gossip [led] to conjectures, which became accusations and verdicts over time; information that could be bartered for favors, exemptions, tokens of power.”  One man knows that “his own peasant pedigree was unassailable, and he knew that by marrying into his family, she’d be elevated from the class of intelligentsia suspected of unsavory, unrevolutionary activities.”  When a woman lowers her head to think, a young child interprets the gesture as sadness because “in a world where nothing was left standing, every gesture that involved turning the face away was interpreted as grief.”

As I was reading this book, I was often reminded of some similarities with Madeleine Thien’s novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing which focuses on a pianist, a composer, and a violinist studying music at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2016/10/review-of-do-not-say-we-have-nothing-by.html).  

Swimming Back to Trout River is a beautifully written novel filled with tragedy, but it still manages to highlight human resilience. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of BUTTER HONEY PIG BREAD by Francesca Ekwuyasi

 3.5 Stars

This book has been on my radar since it was longlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize.  Earlier this year, it was the runner-up in Canada Reads.  (I didn’t listen to the Canada Reads debate because I had not read any of the books and I was listening to this one at the time and wanted to form my own opinion.)

The book focuses on three Nigerian women.  Kambirinachi, who believes she is an ogbanje, gives birth to twin girls, Taiye and Kehinde.  The sisters have a very close bond but a traumatic event erodes that connection.  Much of the novel depicts how the estrangement affects them.  Years later, the two reunite in Lagos where they confront what caused their rift.

The narrative is non-linear, divided among the three characters and moving back and forth between past and present.  Taiye receives the most attention and so is most fully developed.  Her letters to her sister, letters which Kehinde has belatedly received, also show Taiye’s unhealthy habits and fragile emotional state.

The novel excels in its examination of the effects of trauma and perceived betrayal.  Kehinde is angry and resentful; she moves from Lagos to Montreal to start a new life though she suffers from poor self-esteem, especially as related to her body image.  Taiye is plagued by guilt and attempts to numb herself by self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.  Lonely without her sister, she becomes rather promiscuous.

The sisters live physically apart – Taiye moving between London and Montpellier and Halifax and Kehinde choosing Montreal – but they are brought together in Lagos because of their mother’s health.  Though the twins avoid opportunities to openly communicate, a confrontation is inevitable.  Unfortunately, when the climax does occur, it falls flat; the important scenes are handled very simplistically. Things have been left unsaid for so long that I think the two need to talk much more to recover from their emotional distance; I certainly expected more.

An element I did enjoy is the cultural explanation of mental illness.  Kambirinachi would probably be diagnosed as a schizophrenic, but she believes she is an ogbanje, in Igbo culture a spirit child who is repeatedly born just to die.  She makes the choice to remain with her human family, knowing that she will pay a heavy price.  The voices of her Kin constantly call her toward death so she can rejoin them. 

The novel is beautifully written so the narrative flows.  And the many descriptions of Nigerian food certainly had my mouth watering.  However, the story is one that has been told often; in fact, I just finished reading another novel by another Canadian (The Good Father by Wayne Grady) that examined the long journey to healing after a close relationship has been fractured.  Considering the accolades the book has received, I was expecting more.  Other than the cultural angle, there is not much new here.

Perhaps I’ll listen to the Canada Reads podcasts to discover more about the book.