Pandora

by Sylvia Fraser, Lola Lemire Tostevin

Sylvia Fraser’s brash and audacious first novel, Pandora, sweeps the reader back to the poignant, too-forgotten world of early childhood so rarely recorded in modern fiction. In the character of seven-year-old Pandora Gothic, Fraser has created a fierce and resilient heroine who mirrors the pleasure and agonies of children everywhere.

As an affectionate and accurate portrait of the hopes, fears, dreams, and tribulations that prefigure adulthood, Pandora is a novel of astonishing literary achievement and sheer unceasing delight.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

261 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Sylvia Fraser (born 8 March 1935 in Hamilton, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, journalist and travel writer. Fraser was educated at the University of Western Ontario. In her fifty year career as a journalist, she has written hundreds of articles, beginning as a Feature Writer for The Toronto Star Weekly (1957-68), and continuing with articles for many other magazines and newspapers including the Globe & Mail, Saturday Night, Chatelaine, the Walrus and Toronto Life. She taught creative writing for many years at Banff Centre and at various university workshops. She has participated in extensive media tours, given lectures and readings throughout Canada, the United States, Britain and Sweden. She served on the Arts Advisory Panel to Canada Council and was a member of Canada Council's 1985 Cultural Delegation to China. She was a founding member of The Writers’ Union of Canada and for many years was on the executive of The Writers' Trust, a charitable organization for the support of Canadian authors and literature. Fraser lived in Toronto, Ontario.

Reviews

[Orla Hegarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book about childhood that everyone should read. I was transported.

[Christina Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Pandora", Sylvia Fraser's debut novel (1972), is an exquisite composition of moments in the life of Pandora Gothic, a tenacious and precocious child growing up in WWII Canada. Poetic in its delivery, Pandora's perspectives of life as a 5-7 year old are told in rich metaphor. Fraser's ability to bring to life the classroom life of Laura Secord Public School is vivid and sometimes shocking in its representation of the brutalities of childhood exhibited in their own attempts to create societal structures and hierarchies. The birthday invitation scene evokes a particular pathos for anyone who has stood on the outside looking in.

“Pandora” is less a coming-of-age story and more an enigmatic journey into the realization of self. Confined by the expectations of parents, family members and her peers, Pandora holds her ground in often dramatic and elaborate refusals to change simply to satisfy the desires of others.

As a portrait of wartime Canada, “Pandora” is a tableau of society working together: Collectors of recyclables, users of ration tickets, and organizers of social teas for the creation of comfort boxes to send to soldiers. The paradoxes and hypocrisies of the class differences are laid bare, with posturing for social capital evident, though Pandora’s mother, Adelaide, remains a paragon of moral rectitude throughout. Fraser also explores the patriarchal nature of Pandora’s experiences and highlights the often subtle ways in which women pushed against rigid expectations. With the end of the war, the cracks in the veneer of imposed gender roles widen, showing the possibilities for a child who always wants more than life is willing to give her.

[Lucas]

Very difficult to produce a writing that captures the essence of childhood thought, in an adult text, which is what this novel achieves. The child is indeed the ancestor of the adult.

Another novel that falls through the crack of time, because of its 70s feminist tone(not that there is anything at all wrong with 70s feminism, just that it is a different tone and is not as contemporaneous to modern issues.). I like a lot of the woman writers in the New Canadian Library, a shame they seem to only be read nowadays when thrust unwillingly into the hands of 2nd year university English students.

[Johannes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This pertains to "Pandora: Eine Geschichte von Zufall, Glück und dem Finden der Lebensfreude", not the book described in the paragraph

[Kaleb Purdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the GREATEST books I’ve ever read. This book needs to be on lists. It should make appearances on ATLEAST great Canadian novel lists, if not greatest book of all time lists.

[Emilia Grujic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Felt like I was playing with Pandora the whole time. Loved this book to bits

[Ibis3]

NCL.2006-10-01