Posts Tagged ‘Canadian Book Challenge 6’

Review: Looking for Anne by Irene Gammel

Posted in 2000s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Read in 2012, tagged Biography, Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6 on December 28, 2012| 4 Comments »

Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic by Irene Gammel ~ 2008. This edition: Key Porter, 2008. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-1-55263-985-6. 312 pages.

My rating: 4.5/10. I certainly wanted to like this book, and I picked it up with optimistic anticipation. Sadly I ended up feeling less than thrilled with my reading experience.

I did like bits and pieces – the factual bits and pieces – and I learned a few things about Lucy Maud Montgomery I didn’t know before, but the disjointed presentation and the frequent “It could have been like this” and “She must have felt like that” and the “I am certain that x was influenced by y, even though I have no proof” soon put me off.

While Irene Gammel is obviously a dedicated researcher and undoubtedly a well-informed Lucy Maud Montgomery scholar, I feel that her presentation of her theories in this book come across as unprofessional because of her continual admitted fabrications and assumptions.

Is it better if she admits it? Here’s a thought – why not stick to the facts? Or else drop the flowery, gushing, pseudo-Lucy Maud “voice”, which served merely to annoy rather than bewitch this particular reader.

*****

The questions Irene Gammel pose as the thesis statements for this book go something like this: What is the mystery behind the writing of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s magnum opus and incredibly successful book, Anne of Green Gables? Why did LMM not document the process of writing Anne much more thoroughly, and, while we’re on the topic, who actually inspired the red-haired heroine?

(Because of course it must have been a real person! There’s no way an author could just dream up a character out of her own head!)

Well, I must admit that such questions have never personally troubled me regarding Anne of Green Gables, a piece of entertaining fiction which I do indeed like a whole lot and which I re-read with deep pleasure every few years. I have always happily accepted that LMM just struck a lucky chord with this one, and that the character Anne was likely an amalgam of various personalities LMM knew in her daily life, with a good dash of artistic creativity rounding out the details.

Does it really matter if we don’t know the exact details of Anne’s origins? Well, it obviously bothered Irene Gammel enough so that she went ahead and assembled a vast array of evidence to support her own theories. Sometimes her enthusiasm carried her away. While the factual passages of this ambitious book are fascinating reading, they all too often degenerate into speculation. The author readily identifies her frequent forays into the imaginary, but they do detract from the value of the research.

Gammel theorizes that Anne’s key ancestor was young photographer’s model Evelyn Nesbit, identified many years after the publication of Anne of Green Gables as “the face of Anne” in one of LMM’s journals. I’m including the photo in question for your edification – see left.

Gammel then goes on to speculate about a vast number of other celebrities, acquaintances and fictional characters who might have added their characteristics to embryo Anne as her creator formed her and defined her in writing.

Fair enough, but these are all speculation, as the Gammel admits over and over. She throws out a daunting array of possibilities and mulls each one over in detail, before admitting that she just can’t quite be sure. I ended up feeling like the writing of this book, much like my reading of it, was a bit of an exercise in futility.

I think I’ll end with this. I could go on and share all sorts of annoying examples from the text – as well as some quite lovely and informative passages concerned LMM which are actually documented and provable by genuine references – but I’m full up to here with this one, so this is all my enthusiasm amounts to.

As usual, Goodreads – Looking for Anne has a wide selection of interesting reviews. I am quite relieved to find that I am not alone in my somewhat faint enthusiasm – others appear to feel the same, though there are some fans.

And if you are a serious LMM fan, by all means go ahead and tackle this ambitious personal project – it’s certainly interesting enough, if one can keep focussed – but keep the salt-cellar handy!

On the plus side: Some unusual LMM photographs are included, and the biographer does manage to give a wide-ranging picture of the time in which LMM was working on the book, and the artistic, literary and cultural mood of the era.

Oh – and a little heads-up – speculation as to LMM’s sexual proclivities abound in this one, though Gammel doesn’t come right out and say the “L-word” except to paradoxically refute the insinuation which she herself seems to make. Many salacious references to Sapphic friendships!

Now, to be quite honest, it doesn’t matter to me one whit what LMM’s sexual orientation was, but obviously it matters a whole lot to Gammel, as she teasingly parades this theme throughout the book. It got tiresome.

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Review: Friendly Gables by Hilda van Stockum

Posted in 1960s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Read in 2012, tagged Canadian Book Challenge 6, Children's Fiction, Vintage, Youth on December 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Friendly Gables by Hilda van Stockum ~ 1960. This edition: Viking Press, 1960. Hardcover. 186 pages.

My rating: 6/10.

An average to good example of the vintage juvenile “domestic drama” genre. I’ve happily re-read this book a few times, though if it disappeared from the shelves I wouldn’t be heartbroken, just mildly regretful.

*****

Living in a large house in Montreal, shortly after a move from the United States, the six Mitchell children, Joan, Patsy, Peter, Angela, Timmy, and Catherine, ranging in age from fifteen (Joan) to three (Catherine), are joined by twin brothers. Their mother has had a hard time with the birth, and is weak and confined to bed, so a strict English nurse, Miss Thorpe, is engaged to care for the babies and help run the household until Mother can recover enough to take on her usual role.

There are immediate conflicts. Only Joan finds favour in Miss Thorpe’s eyes as she proves herself both willing and very capable in helping with the babies and taking on much of the meal preparation; but the younger five are considered much too selfish, rambunctious, noisy, messy and careless by the strict nurse. Father is busy working and is seldom home; cash flow is definitely an issue in the household; which though comfortably middle-class is far from wealthy. There is nothing left for any extras after paying Miss Thorpe’s wages, and several plot lines focus on the children trying to earn enough money for various crucial things they need or desire.

The American Mitchells are still adjusting to life in French Canada. The children attend Catholic school, and their struggles with learning a second language, getting along with the Québécois children who occasionally toss a scornful “You Yankee!” their way, and trying to conform to the strict standards of the nuns and priests at their schools are nicely depicted.

The story focuses on each child in turn, while giving a broader picture of the inner workings of the family. The only child not given a starring role is young Catherine; each of the others has some sort of adventure. Joan falls in love, and attends her first dance; Patsy loses her glasses and disgraces herself deeply with the nuns at school in numerous ways; Peter falls afoul of a schoolmate and in the resulting fisticuffs knocks down and smashes a large plaster statue given by an important supporter of the school; Angela gets lost while attending a maple sugaring-off party; Timmy becomes infatuated with a girl at nursery school, and attempts to come up with a perfect gift for her.

Mother eventually gets better, the twins appear to be thriving after the month or so that we are in touch with the family, peace is made with Miss Thorpe, and we leave the family celebrating at the christening party.

*****

A pleasant though minor story, from an author who then went on to write several more serious and very well-regarded historical fictions set in Holland during World War II – most notably The Borrowed House and The Winged Watchman. Though there are superficial similarities to Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays, Friendly Gables does not attain the appeal and overall excellence of Enright’s creation, which defines the genre and deserves every word of its frequent praise.

The formula is also much like that of the Eleanor Estes’ Pye Family books in that it mostly relates a family’s daily life, sometimes in microscopic detail. As with the Pyes, the Mitchells are far from perfect, which is pleasantly reassuring to the reader. The morals in Friendly Gables are predictable but not terribly intrusive. And everything always comes out right in the end.

This story does have some lovely vignettes of parent-child and sibling relationships. Something I particularly appreciated was how independent the children were in sorting out their various dilemmas, and how confident the parents were in their children’s abilities to cope. Occasionally a child would go to Mother of Father to report the current happenings, and perhaps ask for assistance or advice (always cheerfully given), but often it was merely to report that the problem was solved, whereupon the parent would basically say “Well done!” and that would be the end of it – no muss, no fuss.

Friendly Gables is the last book in a series of three about the same family, so there are occasional references to off-stage characters and previous happenings, which left me a bit out of the loop, but those would make perfect sense to someone with access to the whole set. It certainly isn’t a big drawback, as the author sketches in enough information to pin it all together.

Friendly Gables is set in urban Montreal, and was preceded by two other novels about the fictional Mitchell family: The Mitchells, published in 1945 and set in Washington, D.C., and Canadian Summer, set in rural Quebec, published in 1948.

These three books are autobiographical, according to both the author and her now-adult children, and were inspired by and record incidents in the very real Marlin family’s life. Hilda van Stockum published her juvenile books and her many illustrations of other authors’ works under her maiden name, but was in her “everyday” life Hilda Marlin: accomplished painter, U.S. Civil Service wife, and dedicated mother of six children, all of whom subsequently attained rewarding and creative careers of their own.

Hilda was born in 1908, in Rotterdam, Holland, to a Dutch father and an Irish mother, and spent her youth in both Holland and Ireland. She attended art school, where she apparently received much praise for her realistic paintings. Hilda married her brother’s college roommate, American Ervin Ross Marlin, in 1932, and travelled with him to New York. The couple and their steadily increasing family lived in various cities in the U.S.A.. They then spent six years in Canada, before moving to Ireland, and eventually to England, where Hilda died peacefully at the age of 98, still living in her own home, in 2006.

Hilda, child and grandchild of scientists, artists, philosophers, writers and intellectuals, was raised in an atheist household, but she embraced the Anglican faith in her teen years, converting to Catholicism in adulthood. Her devout faith appears in her books, including Friendly Gables, but more as a background to the story than in a “preachy” manner.

Hilda van Stockum’s strong belief in the importance of family also permeates her writings, making her a decided favourite of those seeking “wholesome” books to share with their children. A number of her titles are still in print, some more than seventy years after their first publication, so there are still eager readers. Hilda van Stockum’s works seem to be particularly in favour with “traditional” homeschoolers, which is understandable due to the author’s positive views on “family values” and religion. And “secular” readers – do not fear! These books can be enjoyed by all.

I’m including this book in the Canadian Book Challenge because of the Quebec setting, though the author is not Canadian, but Dutch-American, and the family in the story is American. National identities and prejudices play an important role in Friendly Gables; the author handles the topic very well.

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Review: Just Add Water and Stir by Pierre Berton

Posted in 1950s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Read in 2012, tagged Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6, Essays, Humour, Memoir, Vintage on December 21, 2012| 3 Comments »

Just Add Water and Stir by Pierre Berton ~ 1959. This edition: McClelland & Stewart, 1966. Paperback. 221 pages.

My rating: 8.5/10.

*****

Here’s another well-read paperback from my late father’s bookshelves, boxed up and brought home six years ago as my just-widowed, elderly mother was preparing to downsize from a huge, rambling three-story house to a much smaller bungalow. Both homes, incidentally, were built in their entirety by my father, who was a foundation-to-roof master carpenter, among his other jack-of-all-trades and master-of-many accomplishments and interests.

One of his interests was books. Dad did love to read, and I like to think that this collection of mostly humorous, often over-the-top satirical, sometimes sincerely thoughtful short essays made him smile as they did me when I finally read this briskly paced book over the course of this potentially dreary day spent recovering from a brief bout with the latest flu bug.

Being a random collection of satirical essays, rude remarks, used anecdotes, thumbnail sketches, ancient wheezes, old nostalgias, wry comments, limp doggerel, intemperate recipes, vagrant opinions and crude drawings …

So says the front page, and it describes the ensuing contents well. Most of these short pieces appeared as columns in the Toronto Daily Star in the 1950s, and they are definitely indicative of the time in which they were written. As a cynically humorous portrait of the era, this book is an excellent little period piece, but it’s an enjoyable read even for those of us not familiar at first hand with the context of some of the references. Berton’s opinionated prose is seldom dull, and the shortness of each entry makes it good for dip-into reading as well. I read the whole thing in one go, and that likely wasn’t such a great idea, as I’m now feeling a bit light-headed, but I’ll blame that on my current bug as much as on the flippant nature of my reading matter.

The book is arranged into groupings of similarly themed articles and essays. These can be read in order, or sampled at will.

Five Modern Fables ~ Pure over-the-top satire starts us off. Berton skewers modern advertising techniques and ploys in his first three fables, lampoons the vicious cycle of competitive Christmas card lists, and ends with a cautionary tale about not heeding the omens and building too close to the volcano.

Seven Men and a Girl ~ Brief character portraits of eight people Berton met and interviewed: Ex-convict John Brown, pianist Glenn Gould, aviator Russ Baker, evangelist-turned-politician Charles Templeton, Canadian Communist Joe Salsberg, poet and writer Robert Service, entertainer Milton Berle, and call girl Jacqueline (no last name given). A Woman of "Vogue"

The Wayward Periodical Press ~ “Six periodical publications deserving of comment” – Vogue, Time, Mayfair, Playboy (and the rest of the Bosom Books), Mad, and Justice. What an interesting combination of companions these are. Vogue is, well, Vogue, and it apparently hasn’t changed much at all.

My favourite magazine, next to Screen Stars and Mad, is Vogue. The day it appears, I rush eagerly to the newsstand and, with the help of a couple of weightlifters, lug it off to my den. For sheer escape reading it beats the old Blue Fairy Book hollow. It chronicles a world so foreign and unreal that I would not believe it existed, if there weren’t photographs to prove it.

The women who grace Vogue’s pages are like no women I have ever known. I have tried to sketch one or two of them here, but my brush does not do them justice for their absolute and utter sexlessness defies reproduction. If they came from a far corner of the solar system they could not be more different than the blousy creatures one finds romping through Esquire and Playboy.

Am I all wet in my theory that a bosom craze is sweeping the country? In Vogue, there isn’t a bosom in a carload. These women are all eyes and cheekbones, and they do something with their necks that I haven’t seen since Leona, the Giraffe Girl, went into retirement.

At the end of the neck one finds a face that has overtones of Buchenwald about it – chalk-white and haggard, Vogue women do not have noses, only nostrils. Their eyes are enormous and decadent, their lips are thin and solemn. Their hair is always quite odd. They are shown thrust forward in inscrutable positions that suggest some curious doe-like animal at feeding time.

Time sets off a passionate diatribe in defense of Canadian content in “Canadian” versions of American magazines; Mayfair is a “high society” periodical seething with anachronistic class consciousness. Playboy and the rest of the “men’s magazines” are investigated as to the number and degrees of exposure of female body parts posed artistically for masculine delectation; Berton claims to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

The Cult of the Bosom has now reached its zenith in this continent, as a glance at any newsstand will show. In the seventeen magazines I examined, there were 503 photographs of well-endowed young women displaying their endowments.

In 125 of these photographs, many of them in glowing colour, the young ladies’ torsos were entirely exposed. In the remaining 378 photographs there was a certain roguish attempt at concealment.

I did not bother to count any photographs of women dressed for the street, because there were so few.

I did not bother to count any photographs of flat-chested young women, because here were none.

I did, however, make a count of the numbers of photographs of women with no pants on. There were sixty of them.

Mad magazine receives an enthusiastic nod of approval, for the “sophistication of the humour”, while Justice, an arcane periodical dedicated to the practices of sadomasochism and corporal “discipline”, garners strong words of scorn.

The Broadcasting Arts ~ Television and radio – including the already-venerable C.B.C. – come in for their turn in Berton’s critical spotlight.

Verse, Blank and Otherwise ~ Several parodies in verse of current events of the time. The Sixty-Five Days of Christmas struck a modern chord, though nowadays it would need to be retitled The Ninety Days of Christmas to approach a closer accuracy!

Christmas began last Tuesday

Just three days after Hallowe’en,

By which time the big emporiums,

Having disposed of the comic ghosts and candy pumpkins

And having burned all the second-hand witches,

Replaced them with more seasonal symbols:

A reindeer with a crimson nose,

A talking snowman and a terribly cute bear,

Fifty-seven varieties of Santa Claus,

And here and there, an inconspicuous plastic replica of the Christ-child,

Entirely non-denominational.

Intemperate Recipes ~ A plea for a return to real cooking versus the pre-packaged growing norm in the titular Just Add Water and Stir, and a heartfelt rant against instant coffee, obviously a newly popular abomination in Berton’s world. Plus four quite decent-sounding recipes – or, more accurately, anecdotal instruction pieces on how to best prepare these Berton standbys – Tomato Soup, Baked Beans, Corned Beef Hash, and Clam Chowder. Pierre Berton in the kitchen – what a grand thought!

The Passing Show ~ A satire from the viewpoint of the future, and musings on the status significance of offices and office furnishing, smoking, and divorce. Shopping for a Coffin is thought-provoking and quite serious, while Several Openings for Novels will make the aspiring writer nod in rueful recognition. A few more observations – paying to be published, the confusion of children’s toy assembly instructions, and a modern Red Riding Hood round out this section.

Certain Vagrant Opinions ~ Full rant mode! On Dick and Jane (Berton is against), On Advertising and the Press, On Racial Origins (none of the government’s business), On Thought Control (shades of Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four), and most passionately, On Flags and Anthem and On Modern Torture (prison reform), which is the most serious piece of the lot, and describes an execution by hanging which Berton was assigned to attend as a young reporter.

Some Old Nostalgias ~ Memoirs, 1927 to 1941, of Berton’s earlier days. Fascinating and charmingly written.

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Review: The Mysterious Christmas Shell by Eleanor Cameron

Posted in 1960s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Read in 2012, tagged Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6, Children's Fiction, Mystery-Suspense, Vintage, Youth on December 18, 2012| 6 Comments »

The Mysterious Christmas Shell by Eleanor Cameron ~ 1961. This edition: Little, Brown & Co., 1961. First edition. Hardcover – Library Binding. Illustrated by Beth & Joe Krush. Library of Congress #: 61-9281. 184 pages.

My rating: 8/10. What a nicely written book this was! It restores my faith in the joys of reading juvenilia, sadly shaken by recent forays into several more modern disappointments in the youth-oriented fiction line.

This one was a recent impulse buy from the ever-changing and happily eclectic selection at the Bibles for Missions thrift store in Prince George. I try to get there once a month or so, and I always come away with a promising mixed bag of reading material. Some goes right back into the giveaway box, but there’ve been some small treasures found there, too.

The cover illustration was what grabbed my attention, though this grubby ex-school-library book showed much evidence of many readers, and was less than appealing at first glance. (It ultimately cleaned up nicely with a triple application of soapy cloth, rubbing alcohol and a tiny dash of benzene – not in combination, I hasten to add, but in delicately selective stages.)

“Those look like Krush children,” I thought to myself, and by golly, my instinct was right. Beth and Joe Krush were a husband-and-wife team of children’s book illustrators working industriously together from the 1950s through the following decades, and their marvelously detailed pen-and-ink-and-wash drawings perfectly depicted the characters of such classics as Mary Norton’s The Borrowers and its sequels, and Elizabeth Enright’s Gone-Away Lake books, among many others.

Here’s a sample. Isn’t this appealing?

And Eleanor Cameron’s name chimed a little bell, too, though I didn’t really place it until I Googled her after I’d read the book. This is the famed Mushroom Planet creator, though those junior sci-fi fantasies were only one aspect of her widely varied output.

The Mysterious Christmas Shell is very much a plain and simple “domestic adventure” story, and it turns out that it is Cameron’s second book concerning the same brother-sister pair, Tom and Jennifer. Their earlier adventure, The Terrible Churnadryne, was published in 1959.

*****

Five days before Christmas, Jennifer and Tom arrive in the fictional town of Redwood Cove, California, on the Monterey Peninsula, to spend the holidays with their Grandmother Vining, and Aunts Vicky and Melissa. As soon as they walk into their aunts’ house, they realize something is terribly wrong. The tree hasn’t been decorated, the usual garlands are in a heap of green at the foot of the stairs, and everyone has a strained smile; occasionally they catch one or another of the adults huddled in a corner crying.

Turns out that the Vining family has had to sell its treasured piece of ancient redwood-forested seaside property, Sea Meadows, because of the year-ago death of the family partiarch, the children’s grandfather. Some investments have gone wrong, and outstanding debts needed to be paid. The purchaser, a boyhood friend of the family, was thought to want to keep the property unspoiled, to be the site of a single home, but recently troubling word has come that there will instead be major development. Hotels, a shopping centre, and a vacation community are planned; many of the ancient trees will be coming down, and No Trespassing signs will be going up barring the locals from their most pleasant seaside beaches and coves. The local townspeople are up in arms, and are angry at the Vinings for the sale; the Vinings are distraught at the prospective destruction of their well-beloved redwood forest.

An offer to re-purchase the property from the developer has been turned down, and a prospective reprieve of sorts has not come about. Grandfather Vining had intended to change his will to transfer Sea Meadows to the state as a nature reserve, but no one has any record of the will being registered, and no one knows if the envelope containing it was actually sent. If the will was indeed written, it would effectively cancel out the subsequent sale, and the property would go to the state once the buyer’s money was refunded. This seems like a way out of the dilemma, but where, oh where is the will?

As Jennifer and Tom ricochet around Redwood Cove looking for clues, we get a vivid picture of a large, loving family, each member trying to do the best for the others, though occasional misunderstandings occur.

The physical description of the California coastline, with its sea caves and pocket-handkerchief beaches, its tide pools and their glorious variety of sea life, is wonderfully well done; it is obvious that the author held the area in deep affection.

I do have an extra special reason for loving this story, having spent some weeks every year in California as a child, visiting grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in the Fresno area, and travelling out to San Jose, Monterey, and Carmel-by-the-Sea to visit family friends and to explore the still-unspoiled seashore along the more remote stretches of coastline. I even had my own similiar near-brush with death, once being washed out into the surf by a rogue wave; my father’s heroic rescue has become a piece of family folklore, and I blame my deep but reasonably well-disguised unease about any body of water much deeper than my knees on that terrifying childhood experience. Tom, Jennifer and Aunt Melissa’s being caught in the waves of the incoming tide sent chills down my spine! I could feel the sand burns …

The familiar setting was a marvelously unexpected surprise, but putting aside nostalgia and concentrating on the writing, I must say I was impressed by the quality of the prose, and by the author’s fine story-telling ability. While this is one of those stories where nothing huge really happens, with the adventures being small ones, and the solution to the mystery very apparent to the reader from early on – the Vinings, on the other hand, struggle on for strangely long time figuring out their clues – I found I couldn’t put the book down until the satisfyingly happy (though rather improbable) ending.

A grand vintage read for adults of a certain age wishing to revisit their youth through the pages of a book, though I’m not sure how much it would appeal to our more sophisticated 21st Century children.

Despite the Christmas-time setting, this is not really a Christmas book as such, though a glass tree ornament from Innsbruck plays a major part. Oops – just gave away a clue!

It was enjoyable to read about Christmas preparations in a place far from snow, and that brought back memories, too. We only spent one Christmas in California when I was a child, as most of our travelling took place in the early spring and the fall, but I remember how surreal it was that one time to be singing carols under the palm trees, with roses still blooming and lemons on the trees in my grandmother’s garden, while back at home, in interior British Columbia, icicles reaching the ground were our parting memory as we’d pulled out of the yard for the marathon three-day drive southwards. (Somewhere I have a picture from that trip of me and my sister standing, in our matching velvet-collared coats, in front of a huge Christmas tree at Disneyland, which was ornamented by coloured glass balls as large as our heads.)

This is an author decidedly worthy of further investigation. Investigating the titles and plots of some of her non-sci-fi “realistic” children’s/teens’ novels, I strongly suspect that I read some of those when I was in grade school, as two or three of the unusual plots sound very familiar, but The Mysterious Christmas Shell was an unfamiliar, unexpected and most welcome find, for all of the reasons detailed above.

*****

Oh – one more serendipitous thing. Eleanor Cameron turns out to be Canadian! She was born in Manitoba, and though she subsequently lived most of her life in California, she is widely identified in all of the material I was able to find online as a Canadian. So – another one, completely out of the blue, for the Canadian Book Challenge!

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Review: David Suzuki: The Autobiography by David Suzuki

Posted in 2000s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Read in 2012, tagged Biography, British Columbia, Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6, Memoir, Nature on December 17, 2012| 3 Comments »

David Suzuki: The Autobiography by David Suzuki ~ 2006. This edition: Greystone Books, 2006. Hardcover. ISBN: 1-55365-156-1. 404 pages.

My rating: 5/10. Interesting to get some of Suzuki’s back story, but sadly my personal regard for this enviro-icon took a small step downward after reading it. It seems like the ego displayed here is as large as the legend.

*****

There’s a little comment someone made in my hearing years ago, which comes to mind right now: “If you want to know how good he is, just ask him”.

Packing a whole bundle of firewood on his shoulder (and understandably so) stemming from his family’s mistreatment during the World War II Japanese-Canadian internments and appropriation of property, David Suzuki grew up feeling like he had something to prove, and he’s succeeded to do just that, in spades. The depth of love/hate public feeling regarding this one soft-spoken and absolutely brilliant man goes to show how influential he has become.

The political right wing hates him, the lefties have made him their god. I tend to swing left, and I deeply admire David Suzuki for the focus on environmentalism he has forced into the public eye, but this autobiography shows all too clearly the god’s feet of clay.

This book looks back briefly to Suzuki’s childhood in B.C. Born in 1936, David Suzuki was six years old when he, his mother and sisters were interned in one of the camps for Japanese-Candians in the Slocan Valley. His father spent the war in a separate labour camp. After the war, the Suzukis moved to Ontario, where David completed his high school education before attending university in the U.S.A., attaining a PhD in Zoology in 1961.

Returning to Canada, Suzuki worked as a professor and researcher in genetics at the University of British Columbia. Branching out to participate in public education, he founded the popular CBC Radio science program Quirks and Quarks in 1974, and the iconic television series The Nature of Things in 1979. David Suzuki was a household name by the mid-70s, and his profile has grown exponentially through the years.

The Autobiography is honest enough in that Suzuki frankly discusses his two marriages and his shortcomings as a less than involved husband and father. His deep dedication to his work and his increasingly hectic public life often separated him from his family, and he freely admits that this is something he now regrets.

Most of this book is a listing of various events Suzuki has been involved in during the past twenty years; plenty of name-dropping of the celebrities he rubbed elbows with – Sting! Buffy St. Marie! John Denver! – and plenty of slightly patronizing commentary on how he brought this, that and the next thing to the public attention. True, so true, but the tone doesn’t feel very kind-spirited at times.

The writing is not the strong point here, either. The subject matter would be much more enthralling if it weren’t dealt with in such a flat “Then I said, then I did, then I said, then I did” manner. There are some personal anecdotes, mostly concerning his parents, and the death of his father, where he lets himself go, and these are the most poignant and memorable of this rather dull book.

I would say “read it” just to get a deeper understanding of this fascinating and frequently self-sacrificing man, but be prepared to come away feeling something like a member of the great unenlightened, living in the dark and waiting for The Master to flick the switch. You really want to know how good David Suzuki is? Read The Autobiography. He’ll tell you.

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Review: Jeannie and the Gentle Giants by Luanne Armstrong

Posted in 2000s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Read in 2012, tagged British Columbia, Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6, Children's Fiction, Youth on December 17, 2012| 2 Comments »

Jeannie and the Gentle Giants by Luanne Armstrong ~ 2002. This edition: Ronsdale Press, 2002. Softcover. ISBN: 0-921870-91-4. 150 pages.

My rating: 4/10. A completely typical “problem novel” (single parenthood, mental illness, foster children) packed with contrived situations. An eleven-year-old heroine is placed in foster care after her mother has a mental breakdown.

Sadly this one didn’t quite fly. The horse bits were good – the best part of this novel, in my opinion – but they couldn’t salvage the rest of the completely predictable, cookie cutter story. Despite the favorable back cover blurb by my up-the-hill neighbour, poet, writer, and horse-logger Lorne Dufour (aha! now here’s an interesting Canadian Reading Challenge author) it just didn’t click with anyone here. Too bad. Jeannie is set in Kelowna, B.C., and as a home-province, B.C. Interior-set youth novel I really wanted to love it. (Plus the cover image is fantastic.)

From the publisher’s website:

Jeannie and the Gentle Giants, a novel for readers eight to fourteen, deals with the problems experienced by children when they are taken from their parents and have to make a new life with foster parents in a new community. In Jeannie’s case, the problems begin when her mother falls ill and can no longer care for her. Taken from her home, placed with foster parents and unable to discover the whereabouts of her ill mother, young Jeannie withdraws into herself and can think only of running away.

Gradually her defences are breached by two immensely large and wonderful workhorses and their perceptive and humorous owner. Through the horses and her work on the farm, Jeannie develops new interests, learns to ride and becomes involved in the daily life of the farm, even helping with horse-logging. In turn, Jeannie learns about friendship, love and trust, and ultimately gains the maturity and self-confidence to accept the challenge of becoming herself a care-giver. In this sensitive and moving story, Luanne Armstrong draws us into a world of pain, growth and fulfilment.

Lorne Dufour’s back cover blurb:

In this story, the Gentle Giants slowly walk right through our hearts. We will forever remember their presence in Jeannie’s life and that the great Gentle Giants never forget.

~ Lorne Dufour, horse-logger & award-winning author

The author attempted an ambitious level of complexity here, by involving her young protagonist in a rather tangled combination of situations. We have: mentally ill mother, single-parent family with no father in sight, poverty, social stigma as child of mentally ill mother (handled quite well by author in providing heroine with staunch friends who immediately speak up in her favour to school bullies), foster parents who can’t have children, neighbour couple who find they are expecting a baby mid-way through book, heroine’s questioning as to what a family actually is and her conflicting desires to both be with her mother back in the city and to stay in her new, more fulfilling and interesting country life, doctors refusing to allow child to see ill mother – (this didn’t ring true – felt like a plot element to increase tension – mother was experiencing a psychotic episode, some mention of bipolar disorder/manic depression, but once the mother was capable of sending the first letters, why the heck WOULDN”T she be able to have visits from her daughter – wouldn’t that by emotionally beneficial to BOTH of them) – okay, moving on – learning to handle work horses, learning to ride, dealing with an injured horse all by herself, finding a lost child, guilt guilt guilt because heroine feels she has been the cause of the child being lost, feral stray dog tamed and made into pet … My goodness, what a busy, busy girl.

As I said earlier, I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn’t ever feel “real”. Too much was chucked into the mix, Jeannie’s reactions were not very well portrayed – we were continually given the same set of outward clues that she was all bummed out – she had a “shy look”, “looked down”, “blinked to hold back tears”. The language throughout is overly simplistic, as if keeping it accessible to “poor readers” was a major goal.

Does this seem too critical? I feel like a big old meanie for picking this one apart, but, in all honesty, these were my thoughts as I read.

For the record, I really don’t care for “problem books”, for readers of any age, but in particular for young readers. “This is a book about DIVORCE! MENTAL ILLNESS! CEREBRAL PALSY! DOWN’S SYNDROME! BULLYING! ANOREXIA! ETHNICITY! PREJUDICE! BEING GAY! blah blah blah… If you, dear person/dear young child with a similar issue in your life, will only read this book you will feel so much better because you will see how this marvelous hero/heroine dealt with it in their fictional world and you won’t feel so alone.”

Dear youth authors: Write a STORY first. If there are side issues, so be it, for if naturally included those always interest, verisimilitude and richness to the mix. But don’t pick an “issue” and write a prescriptive “here’s how to deal with it, dear” contrived moral tale. Kids aren’t stupid. They don’t need to be told what to think in such a poorly written way. Yes, definitely acknowledge and include the issues, but don’t build a weak story around them, for the sake of marketing the book to the school library network! This whole “issue story” genre encourages sub-par story-telling.

In my opinion.

Jeannie and the Gentle Giants pushed a lot of my buttons, and not in a good way.

Rant over. (For today!)

Oh, hang on – not quite. “Foster” parents – I always thought that foster parents were those filling a long-term role in a child’s life. Jeannie is in what I would classify as “temporary care”, so the immediate (within days) placement of Jeannie with a new, albeit temporary, “mom” and “dad” didn’t ring true. It is continuously stated that Jeannie will be reunited with her mother once the doctors get her (mother’s) meds figured out. I mean, the actual family placement is okay, but the whole “this is your new family” thing felt rushed and phony. No wonder the poor kid is a basket case – “Here, Jeannie, meet your new mom!”

And another quibble, this with the publisher’s website and back cover plot outline. It sounds as though Jeannie doesn’t know where her mother is through all of this. She’s in the flipping hospital in Kelowna, people. Did you not read the book?! Jeannie knows this, her social worker knows this, her “foster parents” know this – they make continual phone calls and Jeannie’s mom writes her letters, for crying out loud! So why is this presented in the promotional material as “child torn away from parent and searching for her”? The kid tries running away to go see her mother, but she knows where her mother is. She’s turned away as she tries to buy a bus ticket to Kelowna, to go to the hospital, to see her mother, because Jeannie knows she’s there.

Okay, now I’ll quit. I’d hesitated to review this book, because it let me down so sadly, but I did say I’d review and post every Canadian book I read, so here goes. There are a few more disappointing titles lined up for review, so a heads-up for those wondering why I’m so crabby today. I’ve just been pushing them back in the queue, but have decided to tick them off my deal-with list before 2013 hits.

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Review: The Roaring Girl by Greg Hollingshead

Posted in 1990s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Contemporary Fiction, Read in 2012, Short Stories, tagged Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6, Contemporary Fiction, Short Stories on December 17, 2012| 2 Comments »

The Roaring Girl: Stories by Greg Hollingshead ~ 1995. This edition: Somerville House, 1995. Softcover. ISBN: 1-895897-53-X. 196 pages.

My rating: 4/10. These are cleverly written, but a little too far out there for me. I wouldn’t re-read any of these anytime soon, and if I’d never heard of Greg Hollingshead it wouldn’t break my heart.

This collection won the 1995 Governor General’s Award for English Fiction – Short Stories, and the contents are undeniably well-written, but most of the stories left me feeling more than a mite confused, and usually a whole lot disturbed. Hollingshead has a creative mind and a grand way with words – some of his phrases lift up off the page and vigorously come to life – but it’s all kind of kinky. Often humorous, but definitely dark. Lots of sex – mostly of the “ew!” nature – and deeply twisted thoughts.

I’m not going to spend any time deeply reviewing this one, because it would require me to spend more time in Greg’s head (as it were) and, quite frankly, I don’t want to. I’ll be moving The Roaring Girl along to see if it can find a more suitable home.

*****

The Side of the Elements – A couple rents out their home for the year they must be away. Stuff goes on in their absence. This one I rather liked.
The People of the Sudan – A family is maneuvered into taking temporary care of a box full of Canadian Christian Relief “supplies” for someone going to the Sudan; the rendezvous goes awry and the situation goes surreal. Another good one; downright humorous.
Rose Cottage – A young man becomes involved in trying to fix what he believes is an abusive relationship between a nurse and her elderly charge.
The Roaring Girl – A transient girl is given temporary haven by a family, deeply affecting the adolescent son.
The Age of Reason – Some sort of dysfunctional family saga. I have no idea what this was all about!
Rat With Tangerine – Ditto.
A Night at the Palace – This one was a complete nightmare – couldn’t finish it. People behaving strangely. And badly. Hallucinogenic.
The Appraisal – Oh, thank goodness – an actual narrative arc! Well, relatively speaking. A cottage appraisal turns into a conversation on the nature of civilization, and its impending collapse. Awesome – loved it.
The Death of Brulé – A young boy becomes involved with the older girl next door. Ick.
The Naked Man – Another absolutely surreal family tale.
How Happy They Were – Sad people; love gone wrong.
Walking on the Moon – The view from a roof overlooking the people next door. Odd.

So – out of these twelve there were four I kind of, sort of, almost enjoyed reading. The Appraisal is the only one I’d willingly seek out again. Goodbye, Roaring Girl!

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Review: Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker

Posted in 1970s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Read in 2012, Smucker, Barbara, tagged Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6, Children's Fiction, Historical Fiction, Youth on December 16, 2012| 1 Comment »

Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker ~ 1977. This edition: Puffin (Penguin), 1999. Introduction by Lawrence Hill. Paperback. ISBN: 0-14-130686-6. 144 pages.

My rating: 9/10 – A very good historical fiction novel for its intended audience, middle grade to young teen readers. Older readers may notice the simplified plotting and some plausibility gaps, but in general a well-written story with a gripping main character and dramatic situations, well-researched and well-presented.

*****

Author’s Note:

The escape from Mississippi to Canada by two fictitious characters, Julilly and Liza, could have happened. It is based on first-hand experiences found in the narratives of fugitive slaves; on a careful study of the Underground Railway routes; and on the activities of two Abolitionists: Alexander M. Ross of Canada and Levi Coffin of Ohio.

Twelve-year-old June Lilly – Julilly – is a slave on Massa Hensen’s Virginia plantation. He’s not a bad slave owner, comparatively speaking, but when he gets ill and can no longer oversee his cotton farm, his slaves are offered to a buyer from Mississippi, where conditions are notoriously the worst in the slave-owning states of the South.

Night music droned through the slave quarters of Jeb Hensen’s Virginia plantation. The words couldn’t be heard but they were there beneath the rise and fall of the melody.

Julilly hummed them as she sat in the doorway of her cabin, waiting for Mammy Sally to come home from cooking in the Big House kitchen. She was as still and as black as the night. The words of the song beat in her head.

When Israel was in Egypt’s land

Let my people go

Oppressed so hard, they could not stand

Let my people go.

Old Massa Hensen didn’t like this song. He said it came when there were whisperings and trouble around. There were whisperings tonight. They murmured beneath the chirping of the crickets. They crept from ear to ear as soundless as the flickering of the fireflies.

When the slave trader does indeed come, Julilly is separated from her mother and is sent with a group of other young slaves to a much harsher owner in Mississippi. When an opportunity to escape arises, Julilly and her new friend Liza grasp their chance and set out on an epic trek north, finding help through the network of the “underground railway”, hoping beyond hope to one day reach the far off land called “Canada”, where slavery is outlawed.

They succeed, but not without many hardships.

The ending of the story was realistic though rather optimistically contrived in its reconciliation scene between Julilly and her mother; I found it hard to accept so much “coincidence” in such widely separated characters reuniting with such apparent ease. That was really my only objection, though. Oh – and the lack of complexity with the secondary characters. Even though others share the stage, this book is very much centered on one character only – Julilly.

Julilly is a quite beautifully drawn character, and I found myself completely engaged with her story, much as I already knew the plot line both from previous readings and from the inevitability of the stereotyped story arc.

One of Barbara Smucker’s best novels for young readers, and the one which made her reputation as a writer. A very Canadian novel, though most of the action takes place in the United States. Canada’s presence as a destination for the escaping slaves, and the involvement of real Canadian Abolitionist Andrew Ross are key plot elements.

This would be good for independent readers 10 and older. This would also make a good Read-Aloud, for all ages, though the subject matter is intense and might not be suitable for sensitive younger listeners. Era appropriate use of the derogatory term “nigger” throughout; Lawrence Hill’s short Introduction is a must-read for its discussion of this aspect. Fast paced and engagingly written.

Recommended.

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Review: The Secret World of Og by Pierre Berton

Posted in 1960s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Pierre Berton, Read in 2012, tagged Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6, Children's Fiction, Fantasy, Youth on December 8, 2012| 5 Comments »

The Secret World of Og by Pierre Berton ~ 1961. This edition: McClelland & Stewart, 1984. Softcover. Illustrated by Patsy Berton. ISBN: 0-7710-1386-8. 159 pages.

My rating: 6/10. It has its moments, hence the rather generous “6” rating, but I’ve been exposed to Og three times now and I’m still not a complete convert. Sorry, Pierre. And Patsy. This one is a cute Berton family in-joke, and I appreciate your sharing it with the country at large, but my personal enthusiasm for Og and its viridian denizens remains restrained.

*****

My first exposure to this Canadian children’s “classic” was back in the early 1970s, when a keen grade school teacher read it out loud to our class over a series of afternoon reading breaks.

This tweaks my memory – does anyone else from B.C. remember those after-lunch U.S.S.R. periods – Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading? Occasionally these would morph into read-aloud sessions, to the great joy of most of the students in the class, except for those few of us hardcore bookworms who would really have preferred to be left alone to focus openly and with official permission on our own reading choices.

I even remember the book I was sneakily perusing as the teacher read Og. I was deeply engrossed in Jade by Sally Watson – an absolutely marvellous book about an upper-class teenage girl who ends up crewing on a pirate ship, with a desperately swoony captain <ah, sigh> – a saga which I remember with great fondness and which I always meant to track down for sentimental reasons and to share with my own daughter, but which I haven’t yet gotten my adult hands on. Gosh, Sally Watson was (is! – now in her eighties, she’s still writing away, last time I heard) a wonderful writer. But I totally digress. Back to Mr. Berton’s fantasy-land.

I caught bits and pieces of Og but nothing that made me close my own book and listen with great attention. Little green people in a tunnel. And some dead rabbits. That’s about all that stuck.

Years later, as a mother gleefully equipping a children’s library for my own book-loving youngsters, The Secret World of Og kept showing up on all the “best books to share with your Canadian kids” lists I came across. “Well, why not?” I thought. “So many recommendations can’t be wrong.” So Og was duly acquired, in the great big edition illustrated profusely and with more enthusiasm than finesse (Camberwell Art School regardless) by Pierre Berton’s now grown up daughter Patsy.

Our own attempted Og read-aloud session died an early death, as the book was replaced after only an evening or two by Kipling’s Just So Stories, which were a much greater hit with the listeners. Og was soon buried in the stacks, and eventually packed away out of sight. I found it again just last week when I was nostalgically going through boxes of children’s artwork and old lesson papers, preparatory to discarding most of them. Og was a the very bottom of a pile of Grade 3 math worksheets, which was quite a few years ago now. We hadn’t even missed it, or thought about it in the meantime, which is a rather telling state of affairs concerning a book in this household.

“Aha!” I thought. “This will be perfect for the Canadian Reading Challenge! Classic Canadian author, quickie-reading kid’s story – how can I go wrong?”

So, third time lucky, I have finally read The Secret World of Og with my full attention focussed on it, fully prepared, after Captive Reader Claire’s enthusiastic review, to find it at long last quite wonderful myself.

Oh, dear. It wasn’t to be. I liked it well enough, and I can see why others love it, but it still didn’t totally 100% click with me.

I happily admit that I laughed out loud at the best bits: the hilarious Lucy Lawless titles, the marvelous relationship between Paul (the Polliwog), his Pablum, and Earless Osdick the cat, and Yukon King, the small dog who thinks he’s a huge husky. A continually witty commentary comes very obviously straight from Father (our Mr. Berton himself), but I just couldn’t bring myself to much very care for those darned annoying children. And Og itself isn’t a much of a fantasy world, nothing like Alice’s rabbit hole, or the secret rooms of Mary Norton’s Borrowers, both of which seem to have influenced this Berton family fairy tale.

Here’s the story in brief.

The five Berton children – Penny, Pamela, Patsy, Peter, and Paul (aka the Pollywog) – have a playhouse in the woods. One day Pamela looks up from her comic book to see a very small, very sharp saw outlining a trapdoor in the playhouse floor. A small green creature pops up, looks at her, and promptly disappears. Pamela, living in a world of imagination most of the time, and well used to the scornful dismissal of those around her to her observations about unlikely things, neglects to tell anyone about this.

Until, that is, the afternoon when the Polliwog is left alone in the playhouse for a few moments, and vanishes, along with Osdick, into what seems to be thin air. Pamela remembers the trapdoor then, and the siblings manage to worry it open and descend into what turns out to be a tunnel leading underground, to a land surrounding a luminescent river and forests of coloured mushrooms, and populated by hundreds of little green people whose only word appears to be “Og”. Pause for much rambling on about the details of all of this.

The cat is destined for the butcher block; the locals think he is some sort of exotic rabbit, (which quadruped they much love to eat, having discovered the gourmet glories of mushrooms with rabbit sauce); the Polliwog is, as usual, in jail. Needless to say a rescue is effected and everyone returns to the surface in one piece. And that is that.

*****

Some of you might remember the headlines a few years ago, shortly before the revered Pierre Berton’s death at the age of 84 in 2004, when he stated, in a CBC television interview, that he had been recreationally smoking marijuana “since the sixties”. Though he insisted that he didn’t use it when he was “working”, the trippy aspect of the World of Og suddenly looks a little suspicious of something more than mere fatherly imagination!

Okay, okay, I apologize for casting such aspersions. (If you could see me, you’d know that I’m grinning like mad in a conciliatory way right now.) Pierre Berton was awesome; he wrote great books, and by and large was a worthy Canadian literary icon. But you have to kind of wonder… 😉

Some bits of this book are absolutely brilliant; much of it is truly very funny. Give it a look, decide for yourself. Me, maybe I’ll pack it far away again and bring it out to try on the (very much speculative at this point in time) grandchildren. Or maybe not. 🙂

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Review: The Brideship by Joan Weir

Posted in 1990s, Canadian Book Challenge #6, Read in 2012, tagged British Columbia, Canadian, Canadian Book Challenge 6, Historical Fiction, YA Fiction, Youth on December 7, 2012| 5 Comments »

The Brideship by Joan Weir ~ 1998. This edition: Stoddart, 1998. Paperback. ISBN: 0-7736-7474-8. 218 pages.

My rating: 4.5/10. This one gets a “just missed” from me. It was marred by a seemingly unlikely but at the same time groaningly predictable plot, and a selection of overly stereotyped characters.

I initially questioned the historical accuracy, which didn’t quite ring true to me: a group of teenage girls is apparently sent by the Anglican Church to be prospective brides in the female-starved British Columbia and Vancouver Island colonies in the 1860s. This was indeed correct; I obviously do not know quite as much B.C. history as I like to think I do!

The writing is competent enough but the whole package didn’t do much for me. Some teens may find this an acceptable read, but I would hesitate to recommend it, except for its dramatic focus on a little-known chapter of British Columbia and Cariboo Gold Rush history.

*****

Fifteen-year-old Sarah is an orphan in England in 1862. Uncooperative and outspoken, she is a disruptive presence in the orphanage where she has ended up after the death of her parents and then her uncle, so is recommended with great relief by the orphanage head to join a group of teenage girls who are being sent to the western Canadian gold fields as prospective brides for the miners. This arbitrary emigration is presided over by a (hopefully atypical!) prospective Anglican Church minister, the sinister and vicious Mr. Dubonnet. Sarah’s frail older cousin Maud is also part of the group, as are a number of the usual variety of orphans in this type of fiction, including Lizzie, the cockney ex-pickpocket with a heart of gold, and Arabella, the mean-spirited snooty beauty.

Sarah makes the trip in fine fettle, despite continual run-ins with Mr. Dubonnet and various adventures on board. Poor Maud makes it only as far as the Falkland Islands, before succumbing to her constant cough, as we’ve expected from very early on in the narrative – the girl very obviously has the cloud of doom hanging over her right from the first chapter, with her meek disposition and delicate consitution. The surviving orphans weather the rest of the voyage, which is marked with melodramatic incidents to keep things interesting. They eventually arrive at Vancouver Island, are off-loaded at Esquimalt, and are then shipped up the Cariboo Road to Barkerville.

Sarah refuses to accept her prospective husband, and teams up with Lizzie to start an enterprise of her own as a laundress. Justice in the form of Judge Begbie nails Mr. Dubonnet, true love arrives for Lizzie and Sarah, and everything is looking up as we close the last page.

I was curious as to the verity of the “bride ship” angle, so I did a bit of research, and found that the author did base this tale on true events. See Victoria History – the British Columbia Emigration Society, for a brief discussion.

I’ve included several articles from other sources to balance my not terribly enthusiastic review. The Brideship isn’t a bad book, but compared to other similar works in the genre it is on the lower end of the spectrum, in my one-person’s opinion.

I’ve just been reading Marianne Brandis’ stellar 1830s’ Ontario trilogy of The Tinderbox, The Quarter-Pie Window, and The Sign of the Scales (reviews pending), as well as Suzanne Martel’s The King’s Daughter, following a French fille du roy sailing to Canada from France among a similar shipment of “brides to be” in the 1600s. These other books stand head and shoulders above Weir’s Brideship, at least for this reader, reading like properly engaging novels which just happen to be set in historically important and interesting times versus a packaged up collection of “teachable moments” clothed in stereotype and unlikely melodrama.

*****

In a University of Manitoba author profile, Kamloops, B.C. writer and retired college creative writing instructor Joan Weir talks about some aspects of the process of writing The Brideship.

“Usually when I start, I feel very strongly that, when the whole thing is over, I want to have made some sort of comment that is worth making. (I)n Brideship, I wanted very much to get across the idea for modern kids that, no matter where you find yourself, life’s an adventure and you’ve got to seize the moment and take it and go with and make something out of it… I start with that, and from there I go to character, but I have to know ‘why’ I’m writing the book before I start. I don’t know the ending. I think the ending has to grow out of what happens as your characters suddenly take on a life of their own which is greater than you thought when you started. It’s out of their growth that the ending grows, and very often the ending isn’t what you thought, even in a sort of vague way, that it was going to be at all. It surprised me very much what happened to Lizzie in Brideship. Lizzie becomes almost the strongest character in the book, something I didn’t intend at all when I started. I thought she was going to be very much a secondary character. So many readers, when they talk about Brideship, say, ‘Oh, I really liked Lizzie.’

“In the actual historical story of those girls who came over on the Tynemouth, one girl did die, and I felt committed to put that in because I felt so badly about that poor little orphan, Elizabeth Buchanan, who was buried at sea. Sarah’s cousin, Maud, in Brideship is patterned on Elizabeth. I didn’t dare use Elizabeth’s name because this is fiction, and I didn’t want to get involved in ‘this is true and this isn’t true,’ for Elizabeth didn’t have a cousin with her or someone back in England to marry, as my Maud character does. The Anglican Church organized and sent over three boatloads of girls from orphanages, but the first trip is the only one that there was any sort of information about at all. The conditions were absolutely like I’ve described them in the book. I’ve got an artist’s sketch of the ship which was drawn from pictures on file in the museum. It was a tiny little craft that had over 300 people on it. The girls really were housed down below in the hold compartment with only these little tiny portholes.

“The book’s cover was interesting because often publishers don’t give authors any input at all on covers. Kathryn Cole was wonderful because she sent me sketches of what they wanted to do with the cover which was a picture of Lizzie and Sarah dolled up in Mrs. Worthing’s clothes, with parasols and fancy hats, smiling and tripping around the ship’s deck. When Kathryn asked, ‘What do you think of it?’ I replied, ‘We’ll, it’s a very pretty picture, but I’m afraid that it sets the wrong tone for the book. When you look at it, you’ll think it was a happy journey, and it wasn’t.'” Kathryn then asked Joan for her cover ideas. “‘I would like a picture of Sarah below decks in the storage compartment in which they’re living, looking out that one little porthole. And, if possible I’d like her holding her doll.’ Even though that detail makes Sarah look younger than she is, that doll was the only thing that she owned. I was delighted because the artist did exactly what I wanted. The cover sets the tone, and it was not a happy trip. But, if you’d have had the title Brideship and these girls on the original cover dancing around, you would have thought it was like a Love Boat.“

And here is an edited excerpt from the CanLit.ca review of The Brideship.

Four dozen orphans, some of them as young as sixteen, are sent off to the West Coast of Canada on the vague promise that they will find work there. Sarah eagerly volunteers to go; she will do anything to get out of the hated orphanage. An Anglican clergyman has organized the emigration, and this fact alone seems to guarantee that the promised positions will materialize, and that the four dozen girls are in good hands.

Appearances, however, deceive. A few days before their arrival in Canada, the girls find out that “there aren’t as many jobs available” as had originally been thought, and that they are to be “brides instead.” The clergyman, too, is not what he seems: aside from being responsible for deceiving the girls, he is also a thief. He triumphs in the short run, but his dishonesty eventually catches up with him. Sarah, however, never gets to meet the man intended for her. She escapes to Barkerville, sets up a laundry business there, and falls in love with someone she chooses for herself.

The Brideship concentrates more on action than on emotion. Sarah gets somewhat pushed into the background by the question of whether the Anglican Church really did organize shiploads of female orphans under the pretense of getting them positions as governesses, then offering them as brides to the miners working in British Columbia instead. And if, as Weir contends, the answer is “yes,” then one wonders why the author neglects to show some outrage in at least one of the unfortunate “brides.” Not even the heroine expresses any offense at such a monumental deception; she is worried that the husband the clergyman has chosen for her might be a brute, but it does not seem to enter her mind that the clergyman had no right to choose a husband for her in the first place. Although The Brideship has a lot of action, it is short on psychological realism.

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