Glorious Sadness: Valerie Compton's Tide Road

If there's one Canadian novel everyone should read this year, it has to be Valerie Compton's Tide Road.  The masterful handling of mood and perspective is just dizzyingly good . . . the story begins in sadness, shock, with a claustrophobic feel to the perspective of the main character, Sonia.  And then, as the story and Sonia progress through desperate grief and gloom, the narrative blossoms into something so much more.  There is a subtle, transformative shift in the depiction of the world through Sonia's eyes, and that shift is rendered poetically, beautifully and, seemingly, effortlessly.

The story, about Sonia's loss of a daughter as well as her sense of self, takes place in overlapping incidents and unraveling memories.  The 1940s Sonia, who met the abusive Max and the gentle Pete, and the 1960s Sonia, who has lost a daughter and endured years of verbal and physical abuse and self-negation, are fascinatingly realistic portraits of a woman who finds herself lost.  It is painful to read, at times, but it's a painful that has rewards attached to it.  Insight, understanding, revelation, redemption. All good things.


I love this novel, but it certainly isn't light reading.  The theme (abuse, loss, complicity) is dark, the characters tortured in many different ways, yet the overall impression is of a kind of redemptive beauty.  And the language! Oh, the language.  Compton knows how to write a poetic line in believable prose.  And that can't be easy to do.  


* So much thanks to Goose Lane for the review copy.  I'd been wanting to read this novel and was delighted to have one sent off to me!

Having just finished A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley (the third and most recent in the Flavia de Luce series), I must admit to a little bit of Flavia fatigue.  Or perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for our intrepid child heroine?  Either way, I found the novel interesting, but it failed to excite my imagination in the same way The Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie did. Alas.  However, I still find myself looking forward to the next instalment. Especially since it seems to be taking its title from Tennyson's gorgeous poem, The Lady of Shalott (one of my favourite poems of all time). 

But back to A Red Herring . . . 


What I liked about this novel was, as always, the setting. The de Luce's grand house that is suffering from the typical monetary malaise of post-war grand houses, and the English village (Bishop's Lacey) that feels like an English village.  I also find the tension that exists between the three sisters (which sometimes borders on the really hateful) an interesting backdrop  to Flavia's precociousness.  


In this novel Flavia conducts her own steel-nerved hunt for the culprits of three crimes: an attack, a murder, and the death (accidental? intentional?) of a child.  While the police search here and there, Flavia unerringly tracks true. 


To be perfectly honest, I haven't put my finger on why I was less drawn in to Flavia's gypsy-riddled mystery.  Perhaps it was timing (I'd just finished Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and was feeling rather sad I didn't have another Larsson to immediately begin reading).  Perhaps it was the busyness of the week (poetry readings, writing workshops, research days with a co-writer, book club meeting).  Whatever the reason for my hesitation over this novel, I still remain a Flavia fan.  The character is just too endearingly unendearing to give up on.

Trapped Under A Plethora of Piles

My life, at present, could be defined in terms of project piles.  There are four staggering piles of books to be read, reviewed, or commented on.  There is a pile of poems to be read and commented on. A manuscript needing the same. Two writing projects of my own that I'm steadily working on (one prose, one verse), and the usual piles of dishes, clothes, etc., that need washing. All mounting inexorably towards the various ceilings of the various rooms in which they find themselves piled.  


And then there is a project related to journal and publishing creation that I have just recently become attached to. 


Thus it came as no surprise when it occurred to me this morning that I have been neglecting the blogosphere.  It's not as if I haven't been reading around and through the piles.  Oh yes, much Stieg Larsson has been read (I'm at the mid-point in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest . . . Salander continues to fascinate), some poetry has been imbibed, much historical research has been done (relating to the prose writing project mentioned earlier), and some time was found for a few interesting films. It's just the writing it all into a blog post part that seems to have eluded me.


So I'll just do a quick Currently/Recently post and try to come up with something more meaty for the future (some of these reads  deserve long posts of praise :).

• Currently Listening To:  Iron & Wine

• Recently Watched and Enjoyed:  TiMER (2009).  An indie film about the certainties and uncertainties of love.  I'm not sure it says anything new -- or profound -- but I like how it said the same old-same old. And I especially enjoyed John Patrick Amedori's performance.  The ending was a tad unsatisfactory for me (but then, I think that was the point. Challenging our assumptions about the idea of 'the one').

Here's the trailer:

I also watched the Swedish film adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I thought it was a good representation of the main points in the novel. A lot of the details from the novel were excised, and the story was thinned and changed in a few ways, but that was to be expected with a novel of this size.  The scenes I thought would be painful to watch turned out to be very painful to watch.  But they weren't drawn out, thankfully. I was impressed with Noomi Rapace's wonderful performance as Salander . . . seemed the perfect fit. And Michael Nyqvist as Blomkvist grew on me as the film progressed. Unfortunately, now I can't watch the other filmed instalments of the novel til Mr. Inkslinger finishes the novels. 

• Currently Reading and Still Loving: Unsurprisingly, the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson.  Lisbeth Salander grows even more intriguing over time.  I'm not a little concerned about her parentage, but she remains a treat to follow around in Larsson's impeccably described world.

I'm also in the midst of an interesting book on the idea of the Sabbath (Jewish and Christian) by Judith Shulevitz called The Sabbath World.  I find the topic captivating, and her writing style is conversational but not frivolous.  I'm enjoying it so far.

• Looking Forward To:  Besides the plate of homemade molasses drop cookies (my grandma's recipe) waiting for me in the kitchen?  I'm looking forward to more good reads, of course.  There's an interesting-looking novel waiting (Tide Road by Valerie Compton . . . and there's an interview with her on the Goose Lane blog, branta), for example.  And spring . . . spring would be nice. Though it's rather hard to believe in at this moment.