It’s been a week of waiting – and lots of Kate vs Katie baby race jokes. (We’re holding out for a draw and the silver penny). So I’ve been filling the time reading novels. I got through two this past week – 706 pages altogether. Not bad, and it made it really feel like summer. As a kid, I loved the long bright afternoons when you could hide away under the trees in the backyard and devour fiction between bike rides. Summer smelled of green, growing things and library books.
The two books I picked up last week were impulse selections – neither were previously on my radar, though only one of the authors was new to me. I’d recommend them both. I thought I’d share with you loose book reports and also the strange connections that crop up between randomly selected stories and the situation of my own head and heart this week. And if, at the end, you’d like to share your own reading notes and novel recommendations, I’ve love to hear them. There may yet be waiting days ahead.
Remembering the Bones, Frances Itani
She’s an Ottawa writer and a lovely one. I’ve liked her words before and so I was delighted to find a book of hers that wasn’t yet familiar to me. This novel traces the story of Georgina Danforth Witley, a Canadian octogenarian who happens to share a birthday with the Queen. As the book opens, Georgie is on her way from her Ontario home to the airport so that she can fly to London and attend an special invitation-only birthday celebration at Buckingham Palace with 98 other randomly selected Commonwealth subjects. But (and of course there’s a but) almost before her journey has started, she drives her car off the road. The rest of the novel recounts her efforts to survive – physically and emotionally – as she lies broken and unable to move in a deep, wooded ravine. She passes the time by telling herself the stories of her life, the stories and histories of her family. She wonders about rescue. She talks to the Queen.
Of course, the royal connection was an interesting one for me this week. As the world waits for the third-in-line for the throne to be born and I wait for my own tiny Number Three to arrive, I wonder if Georgie’s feeling of connection will resound with my own child. I noticed this morning that the Guardian newspaper has launched an online feature called Not the Royal Baby collecting the stories of other children born this month. I’ll let you know when I post our story, post-birthing.
Another connective note in Itani’s novel for me was Georgie’s grandmother who worked as a midwife. She told earthy stories of birthing and bodies which balanced the more solemn medical textbooks Georgie found on her grandfather’s bookshelf. From the books, Georgie memorized the names of all the bones in the human body. From her expressive grandmother, she learned the saying “be not ignorant of anything in matters great or small.” Good midwife words and good mothering ones, too. Great and small often get messy, don’t they? In the greater scheme of things, what is the value of the work we do? The value of the memories we carry? How is our work balanced out into love? How does that love shape the weight of our days? These are Itani’s questions in Georgie’s story, and I’m finding that these are good questions to carry in my heart right now.
The Snow Child Eowyn Ivey
This is a debut novel inspired by the Russian folk story of Snegurochka, the snow maiden. Honestly, I liked the simplicity of the cover and I like collecting new-to-me fairy tales and legends. I hadn’t heard of the novel, the novelist or the story before. But I’m glad I picked it up.
The novel is set in Alaska in 1920. Jack and Mabel are new homesteaders, struggling against the land and against their own heartaches. Ten years previously, they lost a baby and the grief is only ever just under the surface for both of them. Then, as their second northern winter begins and the snow begins to fall, they find their mood surprisingly changes. They make a snowman – or rather a snow girl – and wrap her in a scarf and dress her in warm red mittens. But the next morning, the girl is gone, and so too are the mittens. In the following days, they each catch glimpses of something running through the trees, and they each begin to hope for something new and unexplainable.
This is a magic story set against a cold and gritty scene. It’s about the desire and the work of love – loving a child and loving a partner, too. It’s remarkable how Ivey works within and without plausibility and how each step is convincing and believable.
Of course, the parenting plot drew my attention. There’s realistic loss here and the abundant hope with which we love our children. Both Jack and Mabel think deeply and honestly about this work of loving children. But their own relationship was also delicately imagined in this story. Sometimes, they are close and sometimes distant, and the relationship itself feels vivid and real. The language is direct, sometimes verging on obvious, but for the most part, it rings true anyway.
The truest moment for me came when Mabel is speaking with her neighbour Esther who helps her to realize her own strength and resources. In Esther’s words, Mabel sees herself as strong – as a mother who has been strengthened by labour and has survived grief. She is surprised to see herself in this way.
“It was as if she had reached into her own pocket and discovered a small pebble, as hard as a diamond, that she had forgotten belonged to her.”
In this line, I found an image from my home, which I’ve included at the top of these thoughts. My own kids love to pick up pebbles, and as we walk down the road together, they charge up to me with their clenched hands outstretched. I come home with full pockets. We put them in jars and line them up on the windowsill in the bathroom. Like stories that we remember and recommend, stories that connect us. Like small gifts that remind us of strength.
