That Just Happened!

Wright, Richard B.  Clara Callan. HarperPerenniel Modern Classics (2001).

 It is the late 1930s and two sisters, Clara and Nora Callan, face the future with both hope and uncertainty.  Clara, a thirtyish schoolteacher from small-town Ontario, longs for love and adventure.  Nora, her flighty and very pretty younger sister, escapes to the excitement of New York, where she becomes a monor celbrity.  At a time when war clouds are gathering, the sisters struggle within the web of social expectation for young women…

From the Jacket

Fantastic.  It has been a while since I have been so contented while reading a book.  The storyline is interesting, the prose: lyrical, the pace: great.  All in all, a novel very deserving of the Governor General Award for Literary Fiction. 

The novel is actually a collection of letters and journal entries written between Clara, her sister Nora, and Nora’s friend Evelyn.  At first I was a little skeptical of reading a book that was just letters, but I soon realized that the letters were so interesting and well written you hardly noticed it at all.  There was never any confusion about who was writing the letter (most of it is written by Clara’s hand).

I have talked about perspective before on this blog.  Usually you can tell if the author is male or female and their characters take on that tone.  This was written from the female perspective so well that it wasn’t until the end of the novel I remembered it was written by a man.  The sentiments and feelings are so clearly female.  Also, it’s also hard to believe a man would write all those letters (even if he is the author!).

Themes in this book are relationships, love, sexuality, politics and culture.

I would say this is was definitely worthy of