That Just Happened!

 Guèvremont, Germaine.  The Outlander.  McClelland & Stewart (1985).  (Originally won in 1950).

…Acclaimed nationally and internationally, in French and in English, as a masterpiece of the first order, Germaine Guèvremont’s  The Outlander   is suffused with the author’s uncanny ability to lead her readers to see with eyes of the character she portrays, to think with those character’s minds, to feel with their souls.  She has given us the simple folk of the Sorel area in Quebec, with their century-old mentality expressed in their customs, legends, prejudices, and popular songs.  In so doing, she has illuminated truths about all humanity, portraying tragedy tempered with loyalty to life, bigotry redeemed by simple affection, the desire for domestic security contrasted with the passion for adventure.  She has done so with the profound effect in a book of poignant beauty.

From the Back Cover

Guèvremont was able to touch on some distinctly Canadian thoughts and feelings in this novel.  I felt she accurately represented the feelings of French Canadians at the time, especially in rural areas.  The land had to be worked and was a symbol of wealth.  People still congregated in somene’s house each night, filling it with alughter, music and gossip to get through the long, cold winters.  I think that the author was able to convey the prejudices and feelings of the people so well, I could picture exactly what it would be like to live there.  The OUtlander is a man who is travelling along the roads looking for work.  One of the prominent farmers in the area allows him to work on the farm in return for a room and food.  This man ends up turning the communtiy upside down.

The family is torn between supporting the father’s decision to hire this man and the prejudices they have towards outsiders.  One woman in the community ends up falling in love with him, but how do you pakn a future with someone who won’t comit to staying in one place?  When the Outlander leaves his impact remains and Sorel, Quebec is changed forever.  I know this was a work of fiction, but it is easy to forget.  I thought this book was definitely worthy of the GG Award.

Schoemperlen, Diane.  Forms of Devotion.  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. (1998).

…Forms of Devotion contains eleven stories, each one a brilliant interplay of words and images. The illustrations, selected by Schoemperlen and depicting almost every subject imaginable, are wood engravings and line drawings from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In some cases, she was inspired to write the story after studying the illustrations; in other cases, she wrote the story first, then chose or constructed the pictures to accompany it. The result is a playful, sometimes surreal and often mysterious juxtaposition of a historical fascination with anatomy and classical themes with the author’s contemporary exploration of everyday people, places and things.

Each story is a creative delight, perfectly formed and rich in mischievous wit, irony and multi-layered meaning. The title story, “Forms of Devotion,” is a wonderful literary cataloguing of the traits and qualities of the faithful, those who “sail off to work, perfect confident that they will indeed get there: on time, intact. It does not occur to them that they could just as well be broadsided by a Coca-Cola delivery truck running the red light at the corner of Johnson and Main.” “Five Small Rooms” is an intriguing, spectral journey into the narrator’s imagination, with the reader left wondering, “Is it madness or a murder mystery?” In “How Deep is the River,” the author offers an innovative, completely compelling take on the ubiquitous high school math problem that begins “Train A and Train B are traveling toward the same bridge from opposite directions…”

Quite different in form, yet alike in their ability to entertain and provoke, the stories in Forms of Devotion show once again that Diane Schoemperlen’s voice is as intriguing, fresh and electric as ever.

HarperCollins.ca

I guess people will say anything when they have to sell a book.  Much like the book Bear,  this description doesn’t accurately portray what’s inside.  I did not understand how each of these stories was “rich in mischievous wit, irony and multi-layered meaning”.  I found myself reading this just because I have to as part of my personal Governor General Literary Awards Challenge.  I hardly ever abandon a book and I have only done so a few times in my life, but this is one that I would have put down after the first 30 pages.  Each story was hardly interesting and superfluous in its descriptive words.  The only redeeming story was “Count Your Blessings (A Fairy Tale)”.  It explores the feelings of inadequacy women sometimes have, even when living the “perfect life”.  Why women feel that they are not doing enough, not challenged enough, not contributing enough, not loving enough, not loved enough, not listened to enough…why it’s sometimes just. not. enough.   That story really resonated with me and it called to mind Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. 

Other than that story, this book was painful to get through.  It took a lot of will-power and multiple attempts to finally finish it.  Her stories were written in such a way that I could not relate to the story lines, characters (of which there are few), or ideas presented.  When I first read the publisher’s description I read the last sentence as “…intriguing, fresh and eclectic  as ever,” and I couldn’t agree more.  When I re-read it I realized it said “electric” and they lost me again.

I gave this one “eh” because there was one story I liked and the illustrations she chose accompanied the stories well.  That’s about all I can say about that.

Munro, Alice.  Who Do You Think You Are?  Penguin Canada (2006.  Originally won in 1978).

Rose and her stepmother, Flo, live in Hanratty-across the bridge from the “good” part of town. Rose, alternately fascinated and appalled by the rude energy of the people around her, grows up nursing her hope of outgrowing her humble beginnings and plotting an escape to university.

Rose makes her escape and thinks herself free. But Hanratty’s question-Who Do You Think You Are?-rings in her ears during her days in Vancouver, mocks her attempts to make her marriage successful, and haunts her new career.

In these stories of Rose and Flo, Alice Munro explores the universal story of growing up-Rose’s struggle to accept herself tells the story of our lives.

From the Back Cover

I originally read one of Alice Munro’s books (Dance of the Happy Shades) for my personal GG Challenge (my attempt to read all Fiction winners of the Governor General’s Award) and I only gave it 1″eh”.  I was looking forward to reading this one as I thought that perhaps this one might be better.  After all, Munro is one of Atwood’s role models and I love  Margaret Atwood.  Unfortunately, I felt it was difficult to sympathize with the protagonist in this book and it was difficult for me to get into it in the beginning.  It has taken me a while to write this review, so I have forgotten a lot of the story already.  There is no doubting that Munro is a good writer, I just don’t think she’s for me.

Themes in this book are self-realization, family, womanhood, class systems.