This week, let’s continue our exploration of the stories of Mavis Gallant, focusing on Forain, her June 1991 piece published in the New Yorker and available in her collection, Paris Stories. Is it about people living in Paris? Yes. Forain begins with both a funeral and a mishap. “About an hour before the funeral service for Adam Tremski, snow mixed with rain began to fall and by the time the first of the mourners arrived the stone steps of the church were dangerously wet.” Blaise Forain is the publisher of and literary executor for the deceased, Adam Tremski. When another mourner slips and hurts herself, he feels obliged to call an ambulance and must accompany the mourner to the hospital where he has to “fork over” a deposit, as the woman has no health insurance. Thus, a story about loss and accident begins with both, as well as a scene showing how the protagonist, Forain, feels responsible. A theme of exile runs through most of Mavis Gallant’s work, and Forain is no exception. Although Blaise Forain is a Frenchman living in Paris, most of the other characters are Poles who keep a separate life. “Tremski’s friends sat with their shoes in puddles. They kept their gloves on and pulled their knitted scarves tight. Some had spent all these years in France without social security or health insurance, either for want of means or because they had never found their feet in the right sort of employment. Possibly they believed that a long life was in itself full payment for a safe old age. Should the end turn out to be costly and prolonged then please, allow us to dream and float in the thickest, deepest darkness, unaware of the inconvenience and clerical work we may cause. So, Forain guessed, ran their prayers.” This passage also illustrates the author’s humorous and ironic style. Another theme that carries much comedy has to do with the writing and publishing world. Forain runs Blaise Editions, a small and barely afloat publishing house. “Season after season, his stomach eaten up with anxiety, his heart pounding out hope, hope, hope, he produced a satirical novella set in Odessa; a dense, sober, private journal, translated from the Rumanian, best understood by the author and his friends; or another wry glance at the harebrained makers of history…At least once a year he committed the near suicide of short stories and poetry. There were rewards, none financial.” Layers of irony lie here: a short story contains references to how commercially unsuccessful short stories can be. Self-reflexive, indeed. “If the firm went into deeper decline, if it took the slide from shaky to foundering, he would turn to writing. Why not? At least he knew what he wanted to publish. It would get rid of any further need of dealing with living authors: their rent, their divorces, their abscessed teeth, not to speak of that new craze in the East—their psychiatrists. His first novel—what should he call it? He allowed a title to arise from his dormant unconscious imagination…He could not all of a sudden start to publish poems about North Sea pollution and the threat to the herring catch.” All of this is quite funny—particularly to a writer. The story—till the final scene a year later—occurs during the funeral service for Adam Tremski and keeps returning to its action amidst lengthy digressions that show Forain’s thoughts and memories of who Tremski was, and that reveal who Forain is. There is a minimum of dialogue; the story is told by an unnamed narrator who is able to show Forain’s perspective, using Mavis Gallant’s distinctive style. It is a somewhat impersonal style—as we’ve said—breezy and sarcastic. “Four months before, Forain had been present for the last blessing of Barabra, Tremski’s wife, at the Polish church on the Rue St. Honore. The church, a chapel really, was round in shape, with no fixed pews—just rows of chairs pushed together. The dome was a mistake—too imposing for the squat structure—but it had stood for centuries, and only the very nervous could consider it a threat. Here, Forain had noticed, tears came easily, not only for the lost friend but for all the broken ties and old, unwilling journeys.” The passage continues with Forain reflecting on Tremski and on Barbara and the funeral. Thus, it must be noted that although Forain is in the present at Tremski’s funeral, he is lost in reverie about the past—of course, this is not an unusual state at a funeral. Another thing worth noting is the distance between Forain and the narrator. The narrator shows Forain with all (or many) of his foibles, negative characteristics he would probably not wish to reveal. Let’s stop here and pick up next weeks, dear friends. Till then. #Forain #MavisGallant #AlanBray

Let’s continue our exploration of the work of Mavis Gallant, in particular her 1963 story, The Ice Wagon Coming Down The Street. Okay. Last time, I talked about how the story expresses a certain emotional tone. Peter Frazier and his wife Sheila are Canadian ex-pats effectively exiled back to Canada after unsuccessful attempts to garner appreciation for their greatness. Peter ruminates over an encounter he had with another Canadian, Agnes Brusen, in Geneva, an encounter that made him confront the failure in his life. A sense of failure, of shame and denial of failure pervades the story. So, how does Ms. Gallant convey this complex emotion? Well, if ya read last week’s post, you’d know something, right? Ms. Gallant deployed a powerful metaphor—Agnes’ memory of the ice wagon coming down the street—to show a sense of childish wonder and personal agency that Peter realizes he has lost. Moreover, this potent image carries a lot of “bang for the buck,” as they say. It conjures ideas about preservation through freezing in ice. The feelings that Agnes and Peter describe are frozen in time. Another potent symbol in Ice Wagon is the Balenciaga dress that Peter’s wife, Sheilah, owns. It’s not explained how Sheilah came to possess this presumably expensive, designer item, but we can assume it was bought during a time when the couple had money and wanted to display it. It makes a telling appearance at the beginning and end of things, as well as in a crucial scene. “Sheilah has the Balenciaga. It is a black afternoon dress, stiff and boned at the waist, long for the fashions of now, but neither Sheilah nor Peter would change a thread. The Balenciaga is their talisman, their treasure, and after they remember it they touch hands and think that the years are not behind them but lazy and marvelous and still to be lived.” In Geneva, Sheilah dreams they’re in Paris and that Peter is more than a file clerk. She wears the Balenciaga “…and puts candles on the card table where she and Peter eat their meal. The neckline of the dress was soiled with makeup. Peter remembers her dabbing on the makeup with a wet sponge. He remembers her in the kitchen, in the soiled Balenciaga, patting on the makeup with a filthy sponge…Sheilah sitting straight as a queen.” The Balenciaga is a symbol of their dreams of success. They maintain it although it is out of fashion and soiled with makeup. Why, you ask, don’t they do a better job of cleaning it? Too literal, my dear. That would be a different story. It is also a symbol of faded glory, of tarnished class. At the party where Peter is asked to take Agnes home, Sheilah is wearing the Balenciaga. At the end, when they’ve been exiled back to Canada, “We have the Balenciaga,” (Peter thinks/says). “He touches Sheilah’s hand.” Now, a different way to present this story would be to have a narrator “tell” the reader that, in this case, Peter realizes he’s a failure. “Peter realized he was a failure.” Or, the character could say, within a scene, “I’m a failure. I will never see the ice wagon coming down the street in the same way Agnes did.” Of course, that would also be a different story—part of the artistry of Ice Wagon is in the delicate showing of Peter’s inner state, a state the narrator is more aware of than is Peter himself. The fact is that Peter’s self-awareness only rarely breaks through his armor of denial. If Peter was the narrator of this story, we could say he was unreliable, unaware of himself. But he is not. We have a separate narrator entity showing us the story. Ms. Gallant does have this narrator saying that Peter is lost, however, she also presents several symbols that express and show what his experience is—in a rather mysterious way. Well, you’re talking about the objective correlative, correct? Yes. The venerable T.S. Eliot developed the idea of the objective correlative, saying it is a set of objects, a situation, or chain of events that express a particular emotion the writer is trying to express. An action of creating an emotion through external factors and evidence linked together. One of the effects of this—and we see it in Ice Wagon—is that a distance is created between the character/story and the author. A distance into which irony falls. Ooh. The objective correlative is a useful way to describe the mechanism of Ice Wagon, where the ice wagon story, the Balenciaga dress, and the circumstances of Peter and Sheilah’s life, combine to show an emotional mood of regret, shame, and loss, one that the author, the narrator, and the reader grasp but not Peter. Till next time. #TheIceWagonComingDownTheStreet #MavisGallant #AlanBray

“Now that they were out of world affairs and back where they started, Peter Frazier’s wife says, “Everybody else did well in the international thing except us.” So begins Mavis Gallant’s story, “The Ice Wagon Going Down The Street,” first published in the New Yorker in December of 1963. It is contained within the story collection Paris Stories, published in 2002. Last time, I threatened to look for symbols, metaphors, allegory and rhymes in this story, and I intend to do that. But first, let’s consider things more broadly. (whiny voice) Scuse me, Mr. A.I. What’s an ice wagon? You again. Well, I will explain for my younger readers. It’s a wagon made of ice. No. Before the days of electrical refrigeration, blocks of ice were delivered to homes and businesses by a horse-drawn wagon, to be placed in iceboxes to preserve food. No—you’re kidding, right? We will see that this symbol of the ice wagon going down the street is key to the story. Probably why it’s the title. ‘Kay. Voices is not a story about Linnet Muir. It concerns Peter Frazier, a Canadian who was worked in various low-level jobs in Europe, always dreaming of material success. In the course of one of these positions, his supervisor is Agnes Brusen, a young woman who affects him profoundly. It is Agnes who relates the episode of the ice wagon coming down the street, a childhood memory of hers. At the beginning of Ice Wagon, Peter, his wife, and two young daughters are living in his birth country Canada with his sister after an unsuccessful season spent in the Far East. And this season occurs after an earlier unsuccessful time in Geneva, where he encountered Agnes. Prior to that there was an unsuccessful time in Paris. You get the idea, yes? Peter (and his wife) is someone who expects success and acclaim but does not work for it. Also, Peter and Sheila are perpetual exiles without a home. But Peter maintains a brave front. “He had tried to tell Sheila why he cannot be defeated. He remembers his father saying, “Nothing can touch us,” and Peter believed it and still does. It has prevented his taking his troubles too seriously. Nothing can be as bad as this, he will tell himself. …as if his office were a pastime, and his real life a secret so splendid he could share it with no one except himself.” He is arrogant and resentful. But meeting Agnes Brusen provides him with a haunting sense of his own moral bankruptcy. Here’s how the story ends: “Everything works out, somehow or other. Let Agnes have the start of the day. Let Agnes think it was invented for her. Who wants to be alone in the universe? No, begin at the beginning. Peter lost Agnes. Agnes says to herself somewhere., Peter is lost.” Let’s look at how the central symbol/metaphor of the ice wagon coming down the street leads us to this bleak end. Peter and Sheila attend a party where Agnes is present. Agnes drinks too much—very rare for her—and the hostess asks Peter to take her home. As they search for his car, Agnes says: “I’ve never been alone before. When I was a kid I would get up in the summer before the others, and I’d see the ice wagon going down the street. I’m alone now.” The next day, at their office, Agnes says: “I told you about the ice wagon…that was the best. It’s the best you can hope to have. In a big family, if you want to be alone, you have to get up before the rest of them. You get up early in the morning and it’s you, you, once in your life alone in the universe. You think you know everything that can happen…nothing is ever like that again.” In her small apartment, Agnes emerges from the bathroom and clumsily embraces Peter—although this is not a bid for seduction. Peter “saw her back and her profile and his own face in the mirror over the fireplace. He thought, this is how disasters happen…He saw floods of seawater moving with perfect punitive justice over reclaimed land, he saw lava covering vineyards and overtaking dogs and stragglers. A bridge over an abyss snapped in two, and the long express train, suddenly V-shaped, floated like snow.” My read of this is that, looking in the mirror, his world cracks apart. All the lies and pretending, the narcissistic resentment that his undeveloped abilities are ignored, are exposed, and he sees his double for who he really is—a failure. What Agnes unknowingly communicates to him is that he is like a child watching the world in wonder but that nothing is ever like that again. He is spending his adult life in the mistaken belief that it can be. He returns home. Peter “thinks of the ice wagon going down the street. He sees something he has never seen in his life—a Western town that belongs to Agnes. Here is Agnes—small, mole-faced, round-shouldered because she has always carried a younger child. Nothing moves except the shadows and the ice wagon and the changing amber of the child’s eyes. The child is Peter…He is there. He has taken the morning that belongs to Agnes, he is up before the others and he knows everything. There is nothing he doesn’t know. He could keep the morning, if he wanted to, but what can Peter do with the start of a summer’s day?” The image of the ice-wagon coming down an empty, early morning street, watched in wonder by a child, is marvelously evocative and magical. And it “holds” much meaning. Peter may have been the child observing, but he is no longer a child. He is alone with Sheila. “…Agnes went on and did—what? They lost each other. Peter is lost.” And there are other metaphors we should consider in this story. Till next time. #TheIceWagonComingDownTheStreet #MavisGallant #AlanBray

This week, let’s examine the style of Mavis Gallant’s short story, “Voices Lost In Snow.” Style is the way an author writes a story; it creates the voice that audiences hear when they read. Mavis Gallant certainly has a distinct style, I’d argue that one can identify her writing after a few paragraphs. What is this style? Numerous wise ones identify several components in style, including: tone, narrator-structure, and the use of creative devices like symbolism, allegory, metaphor, rhyme. We’ve touched on tone, or the mood of the story. Voices describes possibly sad events—an adult daughter discovering secrets about her parents, particularly about her long-deceased father. It is a story about making sense of loss—loss of childhood, of parents, of a city and way of life. But the tone is not particularly tragic. It is light and humorous. Ironic. The narrator expresses no grief; she states things matter-of-factly—and of course, this often has the greatest emotional impact on the reader. Mavis Gallant herself said, “Perhaps a writer is, in fact, a child in disguise, with a child’s lucid view of grown-ups, accurate as to atmosphere, improvising when it tries to make sense of adult behavior.” This quote really captures Voice Lost In Snow. The narrator describes Linnet, who is a kind of spy in the world of her parents, yet unable to make sense of their behavior till years later. “…by taking her out of the city he (Linnet’s father) exposed her (her mother) to a danger that, being English, he had never dreamed of. This was the heart-stopping cry of the steam train at night, sweeping across a frozen river, clattering on the ties of a wooden bridge. From our separate rooms, my mother and I heard the unrivaled summons, the long, urgent, uniquely North American reckoning. She would follow and so would I, years and desires and destinations apart. I think that women pledged in such a manner are more steadfast than men.” The prose is lyrical, but the tone is casual and matter of fact. When Linette’s father concludes the visit with Georgie, father and daughter walk down Sherbrooke Street. “You needn’t see Georgie again unless you want to…(he’d made) a private decision about himself. He was barely thirty-one and had a full winter to live after this one—little more. Why? ‘Because I say so.’ The answer seems to speak out of the lights, the stones, the snow; out of the crucial second when inner and outer forces join, and the environment becomes part of the enemy too.” We’ve talked about the narrational structure in the story. There is a narrator who is a character, a protagonist who seems to be writing an autobiography. She has privileged knowledge of the child Linnet Muir, but it is not expressed in the form of Linnet being a full-blown character with an inner life. It is more that the narrator remembers largely visual memories and tries to make sense of them years later. She “improvises.” Linnet is the conduit for the narrator to recast the past. Yes, a question from the audience. Thank you, Mr. Al. In the past, you’ve discussed ad nauseum, the concept of the implied author. How does this concept fit into Voices Lost In Snow? “Kay—did you just call me Mr. Al or Mr. A.I.? Hello? Mr. A One. Well, in any case, great question. Is there another level of narration in the story, an author entity who shapes the narrator and who may not necessarily always have the same opinion as the narrator? Praps, best beloved. (Cheering, applause). Thank you. There certainly is an entity who has written the story, making decisions about structure, scene, and character. This entity allows the narrator to begin by writing about a different style of parenting—Because I said so. This entity makes choices about language, about the personality of the narrator. However, I don’t think there’s a lot of distance between this entity and the story’s narrator. There is not the sort of tension that would arise if, say, the implied author made it clear that it disagreed with some of the narrator’s conclusions—perhaps simply by showing how the narrator is in error or is prejudiced in some way. “There, Charlotte, what did I tell you?” my grandmother said. This grandmother did not care for dreams or for children. If I sensed the first, I had no hint of the latter…It is impossible for me to enter the mind of this agnostic who taught me prayers, who had already shed every remnant of belief when she committed me at the font.” Perhaps it could be said that the implied author shows us that the narrator is rather disapproving of her parents and grandmother (and of Georgie). Yet, we sympathize with rather than condemn her. That is the effect the implied narrator creates—the unnamed narrator of Voice Lost In Snow is someone who is older and wiser, who is able to express beautiful and bittersweet memories of a childhood that is not idealized. Regarding symbols and metaphor, rhyme and allegory, I say let’s look for them in some other stories by Mavis Gallant. Today, we will bid farewell to Voices Lost In Snow and move on to a fresh one next week. Till then. #VoicesLostInSnow #MavisGallant #AlanBray

We’ve noted the intriguing structure in Mavis Gallant’s Voices Lost In Snow, how the story contains an apparently autobiographical narrator looking back to and showing childhood. Memory it would seem. ‘Kay. That is the illusion created by this marvelous tale. I stand by my comment from last week that it's more fiction than anything. George Woodcock, Canadian writer and savant, said in a rather fussy way, “Linnet Muir is about as near to Mavis Gallant as the namesake bird (a modest British singing bird) is to the Mavis, which is the Scottish name for the magnificent European song thrush.” What’s with all the bird references? By a guy whose name is Woodcock, no less. Well, he apparently knew Ms. Gallant and is affirming that the Linnet Muir stories are fiction. So, within the fictional world of the story, an older woman is looking back on her childhood, trying to solve a mystery—who were her parents? Not as parents, but as people. Now, it’s quite possible that the real person, Mavis Gallant, hoped to solve this mystery about her own parents—after all, it’s a common human experience to wonder who one’s parents really were. But Ms. Gallant was writing a story, perhaps one that expressed a personal issue, but still a story. She created a protagonist—ten-year-old Linnet Muir, growing up in Montreal, circa 1930—and she created a narrator—an unnamed older woman who tells the story about her younger self. There are two distinct times in the story, one is the narrator’s present, largely conveyed in simple present tense, and the past inhabited by Linnet, expressed in simple past. And its variations. Examples please. As noted, the story begins with a passage describing an older model of parenting in which children were discouraged from understanding their parents’ behavior. The verb tense used is primarily the simple past. “Dark riddles filled the corners of life…” “Asking questions was ‘being tiresome…’” Halfway through the first paragraph, there’s a shift to the present: “How much has changed? Observe the drift of words descending from adult to child…” A question and invitation to the reader to reflect on how much has changed and to observe. It could also be the author asking herself the question. There’s nothing like different verb tenses to indicate a shift in time. When is the “now” of the story? The use of the simple past tense in the passages about the child Linnet would seem to indicate they had already occurred, that the narrator is describing them after the fact. But here’s a different passage: “Two persons descend the street, stepping carefully. The child, reminded every day to keep her hands still, gesticulates wildly—there is the flash of a red mitten. I will never overtake this pair. Their voices are lost in snow.” Now the author could have written, “Two persons descended the street, stepping carefully. The child…gesticulated wildly—there was a flash of red mittens. I would never overtake this pair. Their voices were lost in snow.” Written this way, it would indicate that we the readers are being shown action in the past. As written, the narrator, writing in present tense, shows something else—a vision she has of the past. A little girl and her father “descending” a wintry street. But it is not the past; it is present as a vision. What about that lovely, “I will never overtake that pair. Their voices are lost in snow?” Well, it indicates the narrator in her future time commenting on the vision. She does not have the experience of moving past the father daughter pair. They are frozen in time, and there is no continuity—that is, this is not someone writing, “I remember the time my father and I walked down a street in Montreal. It must have been 1932." No, to the narrator, the past is not continuous with the present. They are speaking in the present, but their voices are lost in snow. Heavy stuff. Till next time. #VoicesLostInSnow #MavisGallant #AlanBray

Last week, I began a look at Mavis Gallant’s Voices Lost in Snow, remarking on how the theme of the story is that parents may be confusing to children and/or that children misinterpret their parents’ behavior. This week, let’s look at the prime example of this—Linette’s visit to her godmother, Georgie, accompanied by her father, Angus. “You didn’t say you were bringing Linette!” This is how the adult Linette recalls the visit beginning. Her father says, “Well, she is your godchild, and she has been ill.” There follows a description of how the adult Linette remembers her medical history, how her first doctor, Ward Mackey (great Canadian name) had told her parents she was “subject to bilious attacks”—this being, after all, in the late nineteen twenties. A new doctor, “Uncle Raoul” proclaimed that the young Linette “had a brush with consumption.” Ms. Gallant uses the French, “Votre fille a frôle la phtisie,” the French verb frôler meaning to brush or graze. So Uncle Raoul was not saying Linnet was tubercular, but that she perhaps had some weakness in the lungs. However, Linette’s parents, out of concern, moved to the country where the air was fresher, I suppose. Ms. Gallant writes: “’Frôler’ was the charmed word in that winter’s story; it was a hand brushing the edge of folded silk, a leaf escaping a spiderweb…I had been standing on one foot for months now, midway between ‘frôler’ and ‘falling into,’ propped up by a psychosomatic guardian angel.” ‘Kay. What does this mean? The child Linette had escaped tuberculosis but there is also a suggestion that she got attention—otherwise lacking—for being ill. Georgie observes that Linette is “smaller than she looks.” The narrator Linette observes, “This authentic godmother observation drives me to my only refuge, the insistence that she must have had something—he could not have been completely deaf and blind.” An interesting comment. The adult Linette is saying—because of this memory of Georgie’s comment that she was small for her age—that she must have had some illness, and that her father must have noticed—despite his seeming obliviousness. Georgie offers Linette some mints. “My father and Georgie talked for a while—she using people’s initials instead of their names, which my mother would not have done—and they drank what must have been sherry, if I think of the shape of the decanter.” Then Linette and her father leave. Angus doesn’t live much longer. “He was barely thirty-one and had a full winter to live after this one—little more.” Years later, when Linette is “about twenty,” she again encounters Dr. Ward Mackey, who tells her, “Georgie didn’t play her cards well where he (Angus) was concerned. There was a point where if she had made just one smart move, she could have had him. Not for long, of course, but none of us knew that.” The narrator realizes she was brought along that day to visit Georgie not because her father didn’t know what else to do with her but because her presence was significant to whatever relationship he had with Georgie. Linette was a reminder to Georgie that Angus was married, perhaps that he intended to stay married. The narrator writes, developing a beautiful card metaphor, “I saw only one move that Saturday: My father placed a card face-up on the table and watched to see what Georgie made of it. She shrugged, let it rest…What if she had picked it up, remarking in her smoky voice, ‘Yes, I can use that?…He took the card back and dropped his hand, and their long intermittent game came to an end. The card must have been the eight of clubs—a female child.” So the story ends. It’s interesting that the eight of clubs is believed to represent a casual relationship. A good omen for love as adventure, a bad one for marriage. More generally, it can mean compromises in love. Another source claims that it is known as the playboy card and connects with the needy child inside us and affirms our lovability. Huh, these meanings seem to connect with the story. The adult Linette realizes there was some attraction between her father and Georgie, an attraction the child Linette was unaware of, and that her father was not quite as remote and disengaged as she believed. Perhaps, she is suggesting that her father had made it clear to Georgie he would only pursue a casual relationship with her as he was married. Her mother too is recast—she is not so much the eccentric nut who turns on her friend Georgie but more the woman and wife who was defending her marriage. Let’s keep in mind that this story is more fiction than anything. It’s easy to read it as autobiography but there’s no evidence it really happened, no evidence that Georgie, Angus, Linette’s mother, Dr. Ward Mackey, Uncle Raoul, and Linette really existed. It’s a story, best beloved, a story that expresses truth about people. Till next time. #VoicesLostInSnow #MavisGallant #AlanBray

This week, a new story, a short story, Mavis Gallant’s Voices Lost In Snow, first published in the New Yorker in March of 1976. It is available in the collection Varieties of Exile. Is length the only difference between a short story and novel? Is a short story essentially a short novel? No, best beloved. Our friends at the Encyclopedia Britannica say this: “The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a “complete” or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.” So, a novel may have several subplots and deeply developed characters; a short story is not only shorter but must have focus. Mavis Gallant says, "Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait." By the way, Voices Lost In Snow comes in at roughly 3900 words, on the shorter side for a short story. It has been said that this story is more akin to literary non-fiction or even memoir then short fiction. It concerns a mature woman looking back on some events in her childhood in Montreal, the child and adult’s name being Linette Muir. Yes, Mavis Gallant grew up near Montreal, and, yes, as depicted in the story, her father died when she was ten. However, everyone’s names are different. I would say—and will say—that this story certainly has some auto-biographical/memoir-like elements but is a short story as defined above. At the time Voices Lost In Snow was written (it was part of a series of six, actually) Mavis Gallant was deeply involved in research and writing concerning the Dreyfus affair, that 1890s case of a French officer unfairly convicted of treason due to anti-Semitism. As she studied photographs and paintings of the period, “there began to be restored in some underground river of the mind a lost Montreal.” Forgotten images of her childhood were triggered. A half-remembered image of Sherbrooke Street at night, “more a sensation than a picture,” was the starting point. In writing of Linnet Muir, it is as if the adult Gallant needed to become a researcher into the alien culture in which her own childhood had taken place. She certainly could have chosen to write a memoir about the events she depicts, using her own name, and her father’s and mother’s identity. But she chose to fictionalize it. In fact, we don’t know if the events she describes—particularly the visit to her godmother, Georgie, accompanied by her father, Angus—really occurred. Perhaps the visit occurred, but Ms. Gallant fictionalized the details. We do not know. One of the significant features of Voices Lost In Snow is the narrational structure. We have a narrator telling the story of apparently ten-year old Linette from the vantage point of someone much older, an adult who identifies herself as “I.” “…the only authentic voices I have belong to the dead…” The story begins with the narrator’s voice in an expository mode: “Halfway between our two great wars, parents whose own early years had been shaped with Edwardian firmness were apt to lend a tone of finality to quite simple remarks: “Because I say so,” was the answer to “Why?” and a child’s response to “What did I just tell you?” could seldom be anything but “Not to,” —not to say, do, touch, remove, go out, argue, reject, eat, pick-up, open, shout, appear to sulk, appear to be cross…Observe the drift of words descending from adult to child—the fall of personal questions, personal observations, unnecessary instructions. Before long the listener seems blanketed. He must hear the voice as authority muffled, a hum through snow.” Here we have an immediate reference to the title, the image of voices lost in snow, a child unable to “hear” a parent, or to be able to question her/him. The way the past comes back to us through many filters, leaving us with fragments that lack meaning. There is as well, a clear distancing between the adult narrator looking back on the past and the parenting customs of an earlier generation. This creates sympathy for the young Linette as her mother and father hurt her emotionally but deny responsibility. The story eventually shows how her father uses her as a kind of shield against Georgie. The general theme is how adults can be confusing to children, and conversely, how children can mis-construe the adult world. Before the main event in the story—Linnet being taken by her father to visit Georgie—we are shown several short summary scenes that express this idea. Linnet’s mother tells her not to address other adults in the way her father does. (in a humorous scene, Linette addresses an older neighbor as “old cock” and is told to apologize because it is inappropriate). Linette accompanies her father to Montreal on Saturdays and has lunch with him. “It was my father’s custom if he took me with him to visit a friend on Saturday not to say where we were going. He was more taciturn than any man I have known since…being young, I was the last person anyone owed an explanation…I don’t know where my father spent his waking life: just elsewhere.” Perhaps the question this story poses and answers is why are Linette’s parents so taciturn and opaque? Why does she remember their voices as a hum through snow? The story begins with a provisional answer, that the reason is merely because of their “Edwardian” upbringing. Is this conclusive? No. Then: “Without saying where we were going, my father took me along to visit Georgie one Saturday afternoon.” Georgie is Linette’s godmother, a relation I’m not sure is very common any longer. I had one, although her efforts to mentor my religious education were blocked by my mother, who resented her. In a similar manner, Godmother Georgie and Linette’s mother Charlotte are described as having had a “falling out,” possibly due to Linette not being named after Georgie. However, despite this estrangement between the two women, Linette’s father, Angus, maintains a relationship with her. We will see next time how this Saturday afternoon visit goes, and how years later, Linette learns about what those mysterious adults were up to. Till then. #VoiceLostInSnow #MavisGallant #AlanBray

A lot of contemporary fiction can be viewed as a confluence of plot and character. An important concept is the character arc—the depiction of the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. Our old friend Aristotle talked about this. A classic story structure concerns a protagonist who begins as one sort of person, and as a result of conflict and developments in the story, transforms into someone different by the end. There are many variations on this as well as theories as to why these transformations are satisfying to readers. The classic coming of age tale shows the transformation of a character from adolescence to adulthood. A recent selection in this blog, Normal People, shows the transformation of a main character, Marianne, as she journeys from being a victim of abuse to an adult who can accept being esteemed by a partner. Perhaps the reason these stories satisfy us is because they present a message of hope, that, no matter how awful life is, we can change and grow into someone better. What about Primeval my dears? This story is a bit different as the main characters don’t transform much, or rather, they transform the same way that plants and trees do. What! Indeed, this story is about people in a community who must adapt to quite dramatic and horrific events—two world wars, the Holocaust, the rise of an authoritarian regime in Poland. They do change from birth to death but only in ordinary ways. A tree grows from a seed to a maturity but remains a tree. The same is true for the characters in Primeval. Let’s look at one such character, Genowefa, the first human presented. The “time” of Genowefa begins in 1914. She is the wife of Mical, who is drafted into the Russian army. Genowefa is pregnant and gives birth months later to Misia. What is Genowefa like at the beginning? “Genowefa knew no other world than Primeval, and no other wars but the brawls in the marketplace on Saturdays when the drunken men came out of Szlomo’s bar…So Genowefa imagined the war like a fight in the mud, puddles and litter, a fight in which everything is settled at once…” In Mical’s absence, she runs the flour mill. “Once…she saw the boys carrying the sacks. They were naked to the waist, and their upper bodies were coated in flour, like big pretzels…The naked torsos riveted her gaze and made her feel anxious. She had to turn and look away.” Genowefa takes a lover from among the young men working in the mill. “…from then on…the hunger that would awaken would be even more powerful than ever before.” ‘Kay. Genowefa ends the affair when Mical returns from the war and she has another baby, although there are complications. Time passes, her daughter Misia, becomes an adult and marries Pawel Boski, whom Genowefa approves of. Then, in 1939, WWII begins. Genowefa (who must be in her late forties at this time), observes the Nazis murdering her Jewish neighbors. “She thought of Misia and the children (grandchildren). Her mouth went dry as she went to fetch the bucket.” She prays for help from the Virgin Mary. “It was all happening so quickly that Genowefa couldn’t comprehend the events she was witnessing.” More murders occur. “Genowefa’s legs gave way beneath her, so she had to kneel down.” She sees the young man who was her lover, dead. “She sat down beside him and never stood on her own legs again.” My point in describing these passages is that Genowefa does change as she moves from young woman to a grandmother witnessing the Holocaust. Separated from her husband, she manages her sexuality by taking a lover. When she sees him killed, she develops what we would call psychosomatic symptoms—an inability to walk which necessitates considerable care and attention from her husband Mical. But these changes are fairly predictable ones for humans. She does not choose to have her husband drafted; she does not choose to witness the Nazis’ crimes. She can only react. Here's a description of trees from the book: “In the year of the apple, the trees draw from the earth the sour waters of underground rivers that have the power of change and motion. These waters contain the need to push, to grow and spread.…The time of the pear tree involves sucking sweet juices from the minerals…The trees come to a stop in their growing and relish the sweetness of pure existence, without moving, without developing.” Sort of like Genowefa—sometimes she grows, sometimes she just exists. Now, I don’t believe that Ms. Tokarchuk thinks Genowefa is a tree, but I do think she’s trying to show how humans are mostly creatures in the world, in the same way trees are. In much of contemporary fiction, human characters are generally treated as qualitatively different than plants and animals. They have a complex inner life which is shown in the story. In Primeval, we have situations like Cornspike having sex with a plant, and in this situation, no mention is made of what meaning Cornspike makes of this cross-species coupling. (is she surprised?) Likewise, Genowefa becomes unable to use her legs but there is no mention of what meaning she makes of this. How then does Genowefa end up? What is the character’s arc? The last we see of her, her husband has taken her chair outside—with her in it. “Then she looked at her own feet, knees, hips—they were just as far away and just as much not a part of her as the sand, fields, and garden. Her body was a broken figurine made of fragile, human material…I am a body, she said to herself…When she looked down the highway, she saw the dead returning…There were thousands of them. They were marching in uneven, broken ranks…She saw them all day, until evening, and the procession did not dwindle. They were still gliding past her when she closed her eyes. She knew God was watching them too. She could see His face—it was black, terrible, covered in scars.” ‘Kay. Adios Genowefa. I think the point is not so much that she transforms as a character but that she follows the human life cycle. The "arc" is predictable. More about trees: “Like all plants, the lime trees live an eternal dream, whose origin lies in the trees’ seeds. The dream does not grow or develop along with it but is always exactly the same. The trees are trapped in space, but not in time. They are liberated from them by their dream, which is eternal. Feelings do not grow in it, as in animals’ dreams. Nor do images appear in it, as they do in peoples’ dreams. When a tree dies, its dream that has no meaning or impression is taken over by another tree. That is why trees never die. In ignorance of their own existence, they are liberated from time and death.” I think this is a pretty good description of the human characters of Primeval, who are trapped in space but not time. They dream the book, or the book dreams them. Thank you, Ms. Tokarchuck. Next week, a new story. Till then. #PrimevalAndOtherTimes #OlgaTokarchuk #AlanBray

A strong thread in the episodic stream of threads in Primeval and Other Times concerns Squire Popielski and the Game. In mid-life, the Squire experiences a major emotional crisis after a painful love affair leaves him physically ill and bed ridden. Three questions occur to him as he struggles to recover: Where do I come from? What can a person actually know? How should a person live? His wife tells him there is a rabbi who is a healer and that she has asked the rabbi to come to see the Squire. (This is an example of the story showing the fortuitous mingling of Jewish and Christian people). When the rabbi arrives, the Squire asks him the three questions. The rabbi responds, “You collect questions. That’s good. I have one more final question for your collection: Where are we heading? What is the goal of time?” That’s two questions, actually. We should note that asking questions to spur insight and growth has a long rabbinical tradition, as well as a long philosophic tradition—our friend Plato as an example. Upon leaving, the rabbi, having answered questions with questions, adds, “I will give you something that should now become your property.” The Squire is puzzled but feels better. The next day, the rabbi’s assistant delivers a gift, a large wooden box. There are intriguing compartments within, and in one, an old book with a Latin title: Ignis fatuus, Or An Instructive Game For One Player. (Ignis fatuus translates to English as something deceptive or deluding). In another compartment, there is an octagonal die with a different number on each face, numbered from one to eight. The remaining compartments contain small brass figures of people, animals and objects. Underneath the compartments there is a piece of folded, frayed cloth. Unfolded, it covers “the entire empty space between his (the Squire’s) desk and the bookcases…It was a sort of game, a sort of ludo in the form of a huge, circular labyrinth.” (a ludo is a simple board game in which players advance counters by throwing dice). “Kay, this is mysterious as heck. Is this game supposed to be a metaphor of some kind, my dear? Does the Game tie the stories’ vignettes together? We shall see. “The labyrinth drawn on the cloth board consists of eight circles called Worlds. The closer to the middle, the denser the labyrinth seemed to be. The outer circles were more spacious and brighter. The circle in the middle, the darkest and most tangled, was called the first world. An arrow was drawn in a copyist’s pencil by the first circle and the word Primeval.” Why Primeval? The Squire wonders. Why indeed? “A complex system of little roads, intersections, forks and fields led to the second circle, called the Second World. Two exits led to the Third World. In each world, there were twice as many exits as in the previous one.” The Squire determines that there are 128 exits from the final circle of the labyrinth. The book is an instruction manual written in Polish and Latin, describing each possible result of throwing the die. (Kabballah, anyone?) The game itself is a map of escape. The player starts at the center of the labyrinth, and the aim is to pass through all the spheres and break free of the fetters of the Eight Worlds. “The player sees his journey like cracks in the ice—lines that split, turn, and change direction at a dizzy pace…The player who believes in God will say: divine judgement, the finger of God…But if he doesn’t believe in God, he will say coincidence, accident. Sometimes the player will use the words, my free choice, but he is sure to say this more quietly and without conviction.” So the Squire, a bored aristocrat, receives a game under mysterious circumstances. The game has the player begin at a point called Primeval and advance through a labyrinth by rolls of a die. Well, if this really happened, what would you do? I’d probably lock the doors. Of course, this being a work of fiction, the Squire begins to play—even though, he concludes that the Game is the work of a lunatic. What else does he have to do? He’s a Squire, after all. It’s of note that, at a time when the Squire is questioning his faith, he receives this enigmatic game from an enigmatic religious person. “God manifested himself to Squire Popielski through the Game the little rabbi had given him. The Squire tried over and over to start the Game, but he found it hard to understand all the bizarre instructions.” He plays the Game throughout WWII, during the period when German soldiers are billeted at his house. He keeps playing, moving to the different worlds, some of which have no God. His wife worries. What can we make of this? The story of the Game and Squire Popeilski’s playing of it is a significant thread, a recurring thread in a story made of recurring threads. The difference is that the other threads concern real people, the Game threads are more abstract. I’m going to say that, in the finest tradition of stories about games (Magister Ludi, Game of Thrones?) the Game that the Squire plays is an allegory for the lives shown in Primeval and Other Times. Whoa! The Game thread is the organizing theme in the book. “Games can symbolize winning and losing, life and death, secrecy and foolishness or strategy and randomness. The many lessons a character and, by association, the reader can learn from the many facets of these games make what might be a deep and complicated story more clear to the everyman reader.” The game is played by a player who moves by throws of a die (fate, coincidence) out of Primeval (the first place) into and through a maze of places, some of which have God, some no God. And this is what the book’s characters, Genowefa, Cornspike, Michal, Misia, do. Their lives pass through an extremely tumultuous and dangerous time in Poland, encompassing WWl, WWll and the Holocaust, and the establishment of the communist regime. And their lives as depicted provide answers to the questions posed by the Squire and the Rabbi. Wait, wait! Is the Game a mise en abyme? We should probably talk about that. In a sense—bear with me here—the game creates the world. This is a common theme in religion, that the world as we know it is an illusion, constructed randomly and/or by design. Heavy stuff. Till next time. #PrimevalAndOtherTimes #OlgaTokarchuk #AlanBray

The title—Primeval and Other Times—refers to a central concept in fiction, time, although the word can have more than one meaning. Each vignette in the book is entitled “The Time of (someone or something),” which seems to indicate time as a discrete period, not as a philosophical concept. These time periods follow a generally linear path in that they begin in the year 1914 and end around 1980—based on the ages of some of the characters, although, as we shall see, it is not a straight shot to the end. (actually the book begins in an imperfect tense time that could be any time, with its description of the village). How is the concept of time handled? Well, as a guide, I suppose we should look at verb tense. The first vignette is in the present tense, although as I have suggested, this is really “outside” of linear time. “Primeval is the place at the center of the universe.” The second vignette, shifts to simple past. “In the summer of 1914, two of the Tsar’s brightly uniformed soldiers came for Michal on horseback.” The third vignette gives us “The Time of Misia’s Angel,” Misia being the daughter of Genowefa, whose story is presented in the second vignette. Paying attention? Here, we have a shift to from simple past to simple present tense: “The angel saw Misia’s birth in a different way from Kumerka the midwife. An angel generally sees everything in a different way. Angels perceive the world not through the physical forms which it keeps producing and destroying, but through the meaning and soul of those forms.” ‘Kay. You could argue, how does Ms. Tokarchuk even know about angels? How can she write with so much authority about them? This is fiction, best beloved. She can write whatever she wants. What effect does this have? (this being, the use of different verb tenses). It marks a difference between the characters whom the storyteller is telling us about, and the storyteller itself who exists outside of time. Whoa! That’s the implication. Mortal and immortal beings vs. the narrator. Do angels make use of the simple past tense? I don’t know, my friend. I don’t know. Every time there is a shift to present tense in this book, we are cued that we are reading a commentary by the narrator. And the characters—including God—give no sign of being aware of the narrator. In “The Time of the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle,” we read, “Enclosed in the icon’s decorative frame, the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle had a limited view of the church.” Here, we’ve got a non-human entity presented in simple past. In “The Time of Misia’s Grinder,” which is a story about a treasured object that Misia has, we read: “People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things…Misia’s grinder came into being because of someone’s hands combining wood, china, and brass into a single object.” So, another verb tense shift in a story about a non-human object. Mr. Big Shot, so every time we read a passage in present tense, it’s the narrator’s voice? I supposes, best beloved. The narrator is making a comment about the characters who exist in time, and this comment is from a place out of time. Thanks, that’s really clear. Yes. Is the narrator an immortal being? For the purposes of this book, yes. “Grinders grind, and that is why they exist. But no one knows what the grinder means in general. Perhaps the grinder is a splinter off some total, fundamental law of transformation…” Yup, present tense, narrator speaking. Our theory checks out. Your theory. In “The Time of Dipper the Drowned Man,” we have a story about a dead person’s soul that hangs out around Primeval. It begins in simple past tense. “Trapped in his drunken body, his intoxicated soul, a soul that hadn’t been absolved, with no map of the road onwards to God, remained like a dog by the body going cold in the bushes.” Then a shift: “Such a body is blind and helpless:” another shift: “So in its confusion Dipper’s soul thought that it was still Dipper.” Hold up. This blog is in present tense, right? Yes. Does that mean it’s the narrator’s voice? Um, yes. It is. But you’re misunderstanding things. Not everything written in present tense is in a narrator’s voice, just in Primeval. And this blog. ‘Kay? Here’s an interesting case. “The Time of God” begins, “It is strange that God, who is beyond the limits of time, manifests himself within time and its transformations.” Then a shift: “In the summer of 1939, God was in everything all around, so rare and unusual things happened.” Huh, so God, who is beyond time, must manifest himself in the simple past tense. At least in this book. Till next time, my dears. #PrimevalAndOtherTimes #OlgaTokarchuk #AlanBray

This week, a new story, Olga Tokarchuk’s 1996 Primeval and Other Times, originally written in Polish and translated to English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones in 2010. It is set in the fictitious Polish village of Prawiek—translated as Primeval. Primeval—of or resembling the earliest ages in the history of the world. The novel tells the story of the inhabitants of Primeval over eight decades, beginning in 1914. Ms. Tokarchuk has said that the story is based on tales her maternal grandmother told her when she was a child. Primeval has been described as a fragmentary novel in that it’s made up of some sixty vignettes that could be read as complete unto themselves or as parts of a bigger whole—a chronicle of a particular place—Primeval—during particular times. There are many notable fragmentary novels, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, to name two. Each vignette in Primeval is entitled The Time of (a character’s name), so the novel begins with The Time of Primeval. The first sentence is “Primeval is the place at the center of the universe.” This first section presents a geographical description of the town and its two rivers, along with a naming of the four archangels who guard the four directions of the town. Yes, you read that right. Archangels. Four of them. Rapheal, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel. Archangels appear in most western religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and are generally regarded as the highest order of angels. It is perhaps significant that these fellows guard the borders of the town of Primeval. What is their purpose—to keep out evil? We shall see. Other vignettes in the book concern the Virgin Mary and God, both of whom appear as characters, so the archangels are in good company. But you say, does the presence of archangels mean that Ms. Tokarchuk has written a religious novel, that she wants us to accept literally that heavenly beings are guarding the town? Is she proselytizing? Uh, I don’t think so, best beloved. Well, then, you counter, are we talking allegory? An allegory is a “story, picture, or other piece of art that uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one.” In its most simple and concise definition, an allegory is when a piece of visual or narrative media uses one thing to “stand in for” another. Yeah but, you complain, then what’s the difference between allegory and metaphor? Sounds like a metaphor. ‘Kay. Metaphor is a rhetorical device, like simile…or metonymy. Allegory can be loosely defined as a sustained metaphor used in film, the visual arts, or literature. It is often used to give abstract ideals (Truth, Beauty, etc) a concrete form, sometimes by personifying these ideals as characters within a story. Allegories are systems of metaphors. In Primeval, one of the first metaphors the reader encounters concerns the confluence of the two rivers in the village, the White and the Black. They flow separately but join together at a point where the mill is located, an important site in the story. Two separate streams, joined. This is a nice expression of one of the book’s major themes, the intermingling of Jewish and Christian people. There is an unnamed narrator who tells the stories in Primeval. The characters are not aware of this entity, who knows a lot about them. Even our friends the archangels don’t know who the narrator is. An example, please. In a vignette entitled, “The Time of Cornspike,” we are presented with a tale of one of the major characters, Cornspike, who lives alone and is regarded by the other villagers as a wanton woman. “In the spring of 1927 a sprig of masterwort grew in front of Cornspike’s cottage. Cornspike observed it from the moment it put a thick, fat, stiff shoot out of the earth…What now, my fine fellow, Cornspike said to it ironically. You’ve pushed yourself so far, you’ve climbed so high into the sky that now your seeds are going to germinate in the thatch, not in the ground.” I know, I know, what’s masterwort? A genus of herbaceous plants in the family Apiaceae, endemic to Central, Eastern and Southern Europe and the Caucasus. There are several species, which have aromatic roots, palmate leaves, and decorative flowers. Mebbe you’re wondering but are too shy to say, is this masterwort plant a phallic symbol? Well, yeah. “And one night, when Cornspike had finally fallen asleep, a young man stood before her. He was tall and powerfully built. His arms and thighs looked as if they were made from polished wood. The glow of the moon illuminated him. “I’ve been watching you through the window,” he said. “I know. The smell of you disturbs the senses.” The young man came into the room and stretched out both hands to Cornspike. She snuggled in between them and pressed her face to the hard, powerful chest. He lifted her slightly so that their mouths could find each other. From under half closed eyelids, Cornspike saw his face—it was rough like the stem of a plant.” Adult readers can guess what occurs with Cornspike and the plant man. The point, my dears, is the role of the narrator. No, the point is they’re having sex. A narrator is telling this story, it is unnamed and Cornspike is unaware of it. (Not sure about the plant guy). The narrator sets the scene. It’s the spring of 1927, a sprig of masterwort grows in front of her cottage. Then a “young man” appears before her—after she falls asleep. Is this a dream? Some dream. My point is that the narrator is the storyteller. It shows what the characters said and did—a selection of course. The narrator slices and dices “reality,” picking out certain elements to show a story. What is the story in this case? Cornspike cultivates a robust flowering plant in her garden, then dreams (?) that the plant becomes a man who has sex with her. What happens? “…when the sky became gray and the birds began to sing. Then a shudder shook the masterwort, and his hard body froze still, like timber. The canopies began to rustle, and dry, prickly seeds showered down on Cornspike’s naked, exhausted body. Then the fair-haired youth went back outside, and Cornspike spent all day picking the aromatic grains from her hair.” If Primeval were a realist novel, maybe this vignette could be framed as a dream. A lonely woman thinks a flowering plant is very attractive. She dreams that the plant becomes a handsome man who makes love to her. She wakes and perhaps through her open window, aromatic grains from the plant have become entangled in her hair. But this is no realist novel. Cornspike turns up pregnant by the plant guy.. Till next time. #PrimevalAndOtherTimes @OlgaTokarchuk #AlanBray

Coincidence plays a significant role in Station Eleven. We’ve talked about coincidence before in regard to other novels—let’s plunge in again. A coincidence is a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection. The film Casablanca provides a great example. Rick, on the run from an unhappy love affair (and from the entire Third Reich) runs a bar in Casablanca, Morocco. Everything is just great till his partner in the unhappy love affair, Ilsa Lund, shows up (along with a bunch of Nazis and a husband). Rick delivers the immortal line: Of all the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine. It’s a coincidence that creates the story. But it’s not unbelievable. Casablanca was the major transit point for people in Europe trying to escape the Nazis, and Ilsa and her husband are trying to escape the Nazis. And in Casablanca, everyone goes to Rick’s. So should Rick be shocked? He doesn’t seem to be. Of course, without this plot device, there’d be no story, and this is as true in Station Eleven. An interesting observation about coincidence is that “as a literary device, coincidence is the presence of the author in the novel acting like an ancient Greek god directing events.” Is this our eternal friend, the implied author? Yes, best beloved. Oh yes. There was a lot of coincidence in ancient Greek drama. Oedipus, for example. There’s no causal connection between there being a prophecy that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother and the fact that he does, without being aware of course. The audience makes meaning of this by concluding that the gods were the ones who arranged this fate. In Station Eleven, Ms. St. John Mandel is the god who arranges the characters’ fates. But—a big but—it is not the flesh and blood author who does this but her creature, the implied author. What are these coincidences in Station Eleven? In the first scene, three important characters are introduced and connected: Arthur, Kirsten, and Jeevan, who goes to try to help Arthur when he collapses on stage. Miranda is also introduced early on. She is not only the ex-wife of Arthur but also the creator of the Dr. Eleven graphic novel. Then we have the adult Kirsten and the members of the Traveling Symphony, and Kirsten’s fixation on the Dr. Eleven graphic novel, an artifact from twenty years before given to her by Arthur that I mentioned last week. We know at this point that Arthur and Miranda are dead; we don’t know about Jeevan. We learn about the otherwise unnamed Prophet, a mysterious and malevolent figure who menaces the Traveling Symphony and Kirsten. Going back to an earlier time period, we are shown Arthur’s life, how he met and married Miranda. We learn about the genesis of the Dr. Eleven comics. And we learn that Arthur will divorce Miranda and marry Elizabeth Colton and have a child with her, a child named Tyler. Another important character is introduced, Clark, a friend of Arthur’s who also meets Miranda. Clark knows Elizabeth and knows that Arthur has had a son. We learn that Miranda gives Arthur two copies of Dr. Eleven, one of which he presents to his son, Tyler, and one which he gives to Kirsten. Then Kirsten meets Arthur’s son, Tyler, who is of course now the Prophet. Clark takes a last plane away from the pandemic and finds that Elizabeth and Tyler are aboard. They wind up at the Severn City Airport together. Elizabeth eventually leaves the airport, and Tyler displays increasingly bizarre behavior. (Reading the Book of Revelations in the Bible—often a bad sign). Jeevan is the only main character who doesn’t die or encounter the others. He escapes Toronto after the death of his brother and heads south, where he eventually marries and has children. Charlie and Jeremy, the couple who left the Traveling Symphony and who Kirsten is searching for, are eventually re-united with her at the Severn City Airport. Clark—who has seen Kirsten before as a child (she doesn’t remember this) shows her a miraculous sight from the airport control tower: a far-off grid of electric lights. Electricity becomes hope. Someone has figured out how to generate and harness it again. Maybe civilization is coming back. So, a lot of coincidental connection, a web that is the story. Imagine how different it would be if the surviving characters just went off on their own (like Jeevan). It’s much more satisfying in this fine novel that most of the main characters are inevitably drawn together. It’s ironic too (homage to Jordan Catalano). Next week, a new story, very different. Olga Tokarchuk’s Primeval and Other Times. Till then. #StationEleven #EmilySt.JohnMandel #AlanBray