Trudy J. Morgan-Cole's Blog, page 25

This Is How We Love, by Lisa Moore

This new novel by Lisa Moore, arguably Newfoundland’s best known contemporary fiction writer, is (at least on one level) a story about a young man who is the victim of a violent crime, and the mother who makes her way through the snowstorm of a century to be by his side in hospital.

It’s much more than that, of course: most of the story unfolds through flashbacks, though the viewpoints of three main characters: Jules, the mother, Xavier, her son, and Trinity, a girl who grew up in their neighbourhood who was briefly a childhood friend of Xavier’s and re-appears unexpectedly in his life as a young adult.

Stories and scenes from their past, not unfolding chronologically, are layered over one another with the densely detailed sensory images that any reader of Moore’s fiction is familiar with. These memories and scenes, laid next to and sometimes overlapping one another like collage, do exactly what the title promises: explore the ways we love the ones we love. What love is like in families, in blended families, in chosen families, in wildly dysfunctional families — all these variations and permutations are on display here.

I think this is my favourite Lisa Moore book partly because it felt so close to my own experience and concerns. Moore and I are the same age and live in the same city, and she creates a lovingly detailed St. John’s in this novel, entirely recognizable to anyone who lives here (it’s just my nit-picky brain that has to chime in, whenever a local author does this, to notice the few details that have been changed for the author’s own reasons: no other sensible reader would break the stride of this story to say “But why are Xavier and Trinity at Mary Queen of Peace for elementary school? They’re not zoned for there, are they?” although to be fair I have had St. John’s readers ask me the same kinds of questions about choices I’ve made in my own books, so maybe it’s not just me).

Apart from the broader details of life in downtown St. John’s during the span of decades covered by this novel, all of which were recognizable, there’s the extremely specific detail of Snowmageddon, the January 2020 storm that, for residents of the St. John’s area, put us into “state of emergency” mode two months before the pandemic started. The closed airport, the snow-clogged streets, the power outages, the locked hospital doors — it’s all familiar, and rendered in that beautifully specific detail that makes a great story come alive.

The specific pull of love between a mother and a young-adult son — the worry you feel, the boundaries you observe or violate — is also very close to my own concerns and something I’ve written about recently, so this book hit home for me on that level too, as I imagine it would for many parents of young adults. If it’s really important to you to have a story unfold in a straight-forward, linear fashion, or if you don’t like writers who linger for a long time on loving, detailed descriptions of sensory images or moments from a scene, then this novel might not be for you — and that’s fair; no novel is for everybody. But if you’re willing to travel with a skilled writer like Moore along the winding path that leads up to a single, life-changing incident, and along the way experience a thousand vivid images of how we love — then I recommend this novel, which I found completely absorbing.

Tracing Ochre: Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk, edited by Fiona Polack

This is a scholarly book — a collection of essays on the theme of the Beothuk, the narrative around their extinction, and what that means for how Indigenous people are perceived in Newfoundland and Labrador, among other things — but quite accessible to the interested general reader. It was loaned to me by an Indigenous friend who was helping me think through the way Indigenous characters and questions are addressed in some of my historical writing. The book is subtitled “Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk,” and reading it really did change my perspective.

What did I, as a settler child growing up St. John’s, Newfoundland, learn about the Indigenous people who lived in our part of the world before my ancestors got here? I learned that they were a people called the Beothuk, that they became extinct as a direct result of the actions of my English ancestors — something we should always feel ashamed of — and that the last Beothuk, Shawnawdithit, died in 1829, leaving the only record of her culture and language with a Scotsman named William Cormack in whose house she resided near the end of her life.

I did not learn the mythology that the Mi’kmaq helped settlers to “wipe out” the Beothuk or were enemies of the Beothuk, but that may be because (and I honestly don’t know which is worse), I didn’t learn anything about the Mi’kmaq, or about the Innu of Labrador either, until I was a young adult. I knew there were what we once called “Eskimos” — Inuit people — in Labrador, but did not learn anything about Mi’kmaq and Innu people, two First Nations groups living in the province where I grew up and got my education.

In recent years I’ve become aware of some of the ways in which the “Beothuk extinction” story, and the way it’s told, have been challenged, and of the likelihood that there are people today who may identify as Mi’kmaq, as Innu, as white/English, or as mixed-race, who have Beothuk ancestors. The once-popular idea that Beothuk lived entirely to themselves and all died out without any of them ever taking refuge among or intermarrying with other Indigenous people or settlers, now seems more unlikely.

But what does this mean, in terms of the way we understand “extinction”? This what this book really helped me to think about (including challenging some ideas in ways that were uncomfortable for me, which is always good for learning). Several of the essays in this book (one that particularly stood out for me was Lianne C. Leddy’s “Historical Sources and the Beothuk: Questioning Settler Interpretations”) forced me to think about how the story of Beothuk extinction functions as a guilt-inducing myth, but also as both a romantic and a convenient myth, for the province’s British-descended settler population.

When I say “myth” I don’t mean it’s entirely untrue. No author in this volume would, I think, debate the fact that the loss of the Beothuk nation as a distinct identity, the loss of Beothuk language and history, was a huge and significant loss. The fact that people are alive today who share DNA with Beothuk ancestors does not in any way erase or excuse the genocide of a people. But by framing our story of Beothuk/settler interactions in terms of the Beothuk as a “vanished people,” we deny their continuity with and similarity to other Indigenous groups in the region, often going so far as to frame it in terms of, as Maura Hanrahan writes in her essay, “Good Indians and Bad Indians.” The essay is subtitled: “Romanticizing the Beothuk and Denigrating the Mi’kmaq.”

No white settler today (except someone who was out as a horrendous racist) would say aloud “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” as several white Americans in the 19th century, including Teddy Roosevelt, are reputed to have said. But there is something convenient in the myth of the “good dead Indians” — the mysterious, noble people of the past we are so sorry we accidentally made extinct — contrasted with the complicated, messy, living Indigenous people of today, who come complete with land claims and social problems and, in many cases, mixed Indigenous/settler heritage so that we are able to question them on whether they are really “Indian enough” to deserve the respect we posthumously give the Beothuk.

These are tangly and difficult questions here in Newfoundland, where settler-Newfoundlanders are quick to criticize if Mi’kmaq leaders are perceived as “speaking for the Beothuk,” while sometimes being quite willing to do that speaking ourselves. This book made me question many of the narratives I had absorbed consciously and unconsciously: to wonder why I knew so much about the version of the Beothuk story based on James Howley’s work, for example, and had never heard of the work of Frank Speck, which presents the idea of Beothuk “extinction” in a rather different light. Why I knew the stories of Demasduit and Shawnawdithit so well, but not the story of Santu Toney (on whom this book contains an excellent essay).

That my settler ancestors moved onto this land as if it was theirs for the taking; that they pushed the Indigenous Beothuk population to the point of extinction while marginalizing or assimilating the Mi’kmaq, Innu, and Inuit populations — these are not just historical tragedies, but historical crimes. What this book does is question and explore the stories we tell about these histories, and how the way we think about the Beothuk people impacts our understanding of Indigenous people in Newfoundland and Labrador today.

An Extraordinary Union, by Alyssa Cole

I picked up this romance novel because it deals with an intriguing bit of history and I’m always interested in bits of history I haven’t come across before. An Extraordinary Union is the first in a series called the “Loyal League,” about spies — particularly formerly enslaved people acting as spies for the Union — in the US Civil War. Elle Burns is such a person, a formerly enslaved woman with the gift of an extraordinary, eidetic memory that she now uses to spy on slaveowners and Confederates. The romance is between Elle and Scots immigrant Malcom McCall — also a Union spy employed by Pinkerton’s detective agency, currently undercover as a Rebel officer in the same community where Elle is also working undercover.

There’s a believable attraction/tension between the two leads, but most intriguing to me was the historical background. These novels are loosely based on real-life people, and it’s kind of amazing to think there were Black people who either escaped slavery or were born free, but we were willing to go (or go back) to the South and pose as slaves in order to obtain and pass on information. That kind of courage truly is extraordinary.

Talking to Canadians, by Rick Mercer

A family member gave my husband Rick Mercer’s memoir Talking to Canadians for Christmas. So a lot of Christmas vacation was spent listening to Jason burst out laughing while reading this book, then having him go, “Oh, I’ve just gotta read you this bit … oh, just one more bit …” while reading sections of the book.

In keeping with my policy that the best way to enjoy a comedian’s memoir is on audiobook, read by the author, I decided I would like to hear the book read aloud — but by Rick Mercer, and also in order from beginning to end.

This is as funny and thoughtful as any Rick Mercer fan would expect his book to be, with great anecdotes about growing up in Newfoundland and breaking into show business on the local scene before eventually making it big on national TV. My only disappointment came when I realized the book was nearing an end and Rick was just getting ready to launch his solo TV show. That was when it dawned on me this book was not going to cover the long and epic run of the Mercer Report — that will have to wait for another book! Thoroughly enjoyable!

All the Seas of the World, by Guy Gavriel Kay

With Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest novel, we are in the same world and with some of the same characters as in his last book, A Brightness Long Ago, soon after the events of that novel. It’s not quite a sequel though; while some characters recur from Brightness, the focus is on two new characters, a pair of sea-going traders — one male, one female; one Kindath, one Jaddite — who take on an incredibly risky job: to assassinate a ruler.

Things don’t go quite according to plan, but in some ways they go better — the two enterprising traders/adventurers, Rafel and Nadia, end up with unforeseen wealth, influence, and connections, even though they technically don’t complete the job they were hired to do. The rest of the novel is the unfolding of the consequences of that action, in the lives of the two main characters and many peripheral ones.

Everything I’ve said in previous reviews about this whole cycle of GGK novels — beginning with my all-time favourite, The Lions of Al-Rassan, continuing through Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, and bringing the story hundreds of years forward into the Renaissance era with Children of Earth and Sky, A Brightness Long Ago, and now this book — applies here. The richness of this almost-historical-fiction in a sort of parallel earth with two moons and many striking similarities to real history, the extremely light touch with which fantasy/folklore/mythology/the supernatural is layered into the story — all of that. The writing is beautiful, the characters memorable, and this was another unforgettable addition to the world Kay is creating in these stories.

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, by Imogen Hermes Gowar

This was an absolutely fabulous piece of historical fiction set in late 18th century England — the kind of historical fiction so rich and detailed and evocative you start to suspect the author might actually be a time traveller. Two storylines open the novel: a middle-aged, widowed merchant named Jonah Hancock has taken delivery of a most unusual cargo — what appears to be an actual (though not live) mermaid, purchased at a staggering price by the captain of Hancock’s ship, a curiosity that has the ability either to ruin Hancock, or to make his fortune. At the same time, in a very different stratum of society, a high-class courtesan named Angelica Neal, just released from a long-term position as mistress to a now-dead nobleman, ponders her future: will she remain a free agent and attempt to find a new patron, or will she return to the extremely exclusive brothel run by her former madam, Mrs. Chappell.

Each of these characters, whose lives occupy such separate spheres of late 1700s London that they appear to have nothing in common, are poised at a moment of decision that will change their whole lives — and, inevitably, bring them into contact with each other.

Brilliant historical fiction with a fascinating thread of magic realism. I found this book hard to put down.

The Summer Place, by Jennifer Weiner

Back in spring 2020 when Covid first struck and most places were under some degree of lockdown, there was much discussion around whether there would ever be great “lockdown novels” or “Covid novels” — whether the collective pandemic weirdness that we were all experiencing in different ways would make its way into fiction, or whether there would be a collective literary forgetting about this huge event (as there was, with some exceptions, to the 1918/19 flu epidemic).

Now, two years into the whole thing, I think we are starting to see the great Covid novels emerge, whether those are literary (like the last book I reviewed, Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence), or popular, like Jennifer Weiner’s The Summer Place. The specific slice of pandemic reality that this novel touches on is the strain that months of lockdown together (even if a very spacious Brooklyn brownstone, where the lucky protagonists of The Summer Place get to live) can put on relationships, as couples are exposed to each other’s annoying habits at close range, week after week, without the release of going to different offices or going out with friends.

Of course, there’s more going on below the surface of Sarah and Eli’s marriage than lockdown combined with midlife crisis. In fact, there’s more below the surface than appears to be happening with every single character in this big, sprawling novel about an extended family meeting at a Cape Cod beach house (the same house that links this novel to Big Summer and That Summer). The secrets we keep, the lies we tell, the regrets we hang onto, the choices we did or didn’t make — all those are the engines that fuel the story of Sarah’s family in the first year of the pandemic, and it all comes to a head on the weekend of a big, impulsive, beach house wedding. This is the perfect Jennifer Weiner novel for our times and I loved every minute of it.

The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich

This powerful, engrossing, funny, sad, enraging novel tells the story of Tookie, an Indigenous woman who is rebuilding her life after several years of incarceration. Tookie is brilliant, stubborn, and an absolutely memorable first-person narrator. She is married to Pollux, an old friend who’s also the officer who arrested her. She works at an Indigenous-focused bookstore that is very closely modelled on the bookstore Louise Erdrich actually owns in real life (and the store’s owner, “Louise,” is a minor character in this novel). Oh, and the bookstore — at least, when Tookie is in it — is being haunted by the ghost of a former customer, a white woman who was fascinated (in a fairly pushy way) with Indigenous culture. So, along with everything else, it’s a ghost story.

If that (and just the fact that it’s written by Louise Erdrich) is not enough to hook you, there’s a whole other layer that makes this book fascinating. Except for the opening, which gives us the backstory on Tookie’s crime and punishment, the novel takes place between November 2019 and November 2020, so the lives of the characters are impacted first by the Covid-19 pandemic, then by the protests following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, where the story is set. These contemporary events don’t feel gimmicky: they feel like the heart of a story that is about resilience, persistence, and love in the face of illness, racism, and everything else the world throws at these characters. This was a fascinating and beautiful book to read.

Hell of a Book, by Jason Mott

This is a novel about a writer on a book tour. The writer is kind of a jerk; in his opening scene he’s running naked down a hotel corridor because the husband of the woman he’s just jumped into bed with has burst in on them. Who the woman is isn’t important: we won’t see her or hear about her after the next five pages of the book. The writer is not good with women, not good with relationships in general, not good with people. He’s also not good with himself. He’s dazed and confused by his own book tour and unsure what his book is about, though he knows his job is to go to a bunch of events, give interviews, and agree with everyone who tells him it’s a hell of a book.

This is also a novel about a young boy nicknamed Soot, a Black boy in the American south with skin so very black it makes him notable — and a target — to everyone, including other Black kids. Soot’s parents try to teach him to become invisible, and when it seems that sometimes he literally can, you get your first hint that this is not a straight-ahead realistic novel.

The third main character, besides Soot and the writer (whose chapters alternate with each other), is The Kid, a young Black boy who mysteriously appears to the writer (who sometimes has hallucinations, so he’s not too surprised by this) even though others can’t see him.

This is a novel about race, about Blackness and anti-Black violence in America. The writer is a Black man who has tried not to centre race in his writing, who is consciously trying not to be a “Black writer.” But when his book tour coincides with the shooting of a Black teenager (who is, and is not, the “Kid” who appears in his hallucinations) and a series of protests about police brutality, he finds himself having to address racial issues, and his own muddied memory of the past.

All of this makes the novel sound more linear, and more coherent, than it is. Several reviews I’ve read of Hell of a Book, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in the US, have spent a lot of ink trying to parse out whether Soot, the writer, and the Kid are all the same person, and pointing out where their stories different. But that’s wasted effort, in my opinion — this isn’t that kind of book. Of course they’re the same person, and also, of course, they aren’t – they are Black men, and boys, and teenagers in America, confronting or trying not to confront the realities of racism. If you let go of trying to “make sense” of this story and just read it and experience it, scene by scene, it’s powerful. Trying to map out the plot or figure out who these characters “really are” just gets in the way of experiencing the novel.

I will say that one part of the book that didn’t land for me nearly as well as the focus on racism and the Black experience, is all the humour (?) around the surreal, disorienting book tour. I’ve read an interview where Mott talked about how it’s based on his own experiences on book tour, how you get so jet-lagged and disoriented by travel that you don’t know who you’re talking to and the canned responses you give about your book to every interview become almost meaningless. I’m sure there’s a rich vein of humour to be mined here but as one of the legion of small-press authors who can only fantasize about ever being sent on a paid, cross-country book tour, I have to say that there’s a whiff of “Gee, I’d sure like to have your problems” for me in reading about the rigours of a book tour.

However, this was a minor quibble, and one that’s probably personal to me and people in my situation — the book is, after all, not really about a writer on a book tour. It’s about a man who’s in the public eye, who communicates for a living, yet who has in a sense made his real self as silent and invisible as Soot on the school bus: hiding from bullies; hiding from his own past; hiding from the harsh truth of being a Black man living in a racist world.

Last Hummingbird West of Chile, by Nicholas Ruddock

This is a beautiful, evocative book that does some really unexpected things with point of view. Beginning in a stuffy, unhappy, upper-class Victorian English household with the birth of two children, the story eventually circumnavigates the globe and takes characters and readers on a series of adventures. Along the way, the point of view shifts, not just among several human characters but also to such unexpected first-person narrators as a tree, a donkey, and the titular hummingbird. It’s witty and it’s clever, but it’s also deeply insightful and heartfelt. Early on I was thinking that with so many point of view characters and so little time spent with each of them, they might not be developed enough for me to care deeply about any of them. But then a character death nearly made me cry and I realized that author Ruddock had achieved the difficult task of creating, with just a few handfuls of paragraphs, characters so real and believable that I cared intensely about their fate.

Though the style is different, much of the subject matter and theme of this book reminded me of Marina Endicott’s The Difference, one of my favourite novels of the last few years. Like that novel, much of that one is spent on the oceans of the world, in the age when travel by sail is soon to give way to travel by steamship. Also like The Difference, The Last Hummingbird reflects thoughtfully on the damage and dangers of colonialism — not just in the violence European humans have inflicted on other humans, but i the violence humans have inflicted on the natural world — right down to the hummingbirds.

I loved reading this book.