A new book this week, Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 novella, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, weighing in at one-hundred and twelve pages in the 1992 Flamingo edition. I became aware of Grand Central via my son, who read it in a literature class at McGill University and recommended it to me. Elizabeth Smart was a Canadian writer whose life took a dramatic turn when she picked up a book of poetry in a London bookshop written by George Barker. She loved it, and eventually loved the married Mr. Barker, embarking on an affair with him that produced four children and this book, the somewhat fictionalized account of at least part of their affair. Ms. Smart died in 1986. How’s that for drama? There’s more. George Barker, who fathered a total of fifteen children with three different women (busy, busy) published his own account of the affair with Ms. Smart, The Dead Seagull. After Ms. Smart became pregnant with their first child, Mr. Barker attempted to visit her in Canada but was turned back at the border for “moral turpitude.” Whoa! The story of this couple’s passion is probably a good example of the sometimes risky project of having writers as romantic partners. Everything’s going along great and then you realize the latest blockbuster novel is all about you and how you leave your dirty socks on the bedroom floor. However, Grand Central Station is no blockbuster, and has never aspired to be. After 1945, it languished for twenty years before it was re-published to greater acclaim. Of course, part of the reason it languished was because Ms. Smart’s mother bought up as many copies of the two thousand initial printing and burned them. I guess she didn’t like it. Grand Central asks a lot of the reader. Umberto Eco talks about the Encyclopedia of knowledge that each reader brings to a reading and that may be used to understand texts. Thus, if you have some knowledge of dog grooming and you read a novel about a dog groomer, you’re reading will be informed by your own Encyclopedia with its entry under Dog Grooming. Ms. Smart’s story requires the reader to have knowledge of The Psalms (from which the title is derived), The Song of Solomon, the story of Tristan and Isolde, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the poetry of Rilke, and Greek myth in general. (probably more I don’t know about). Now, if you’re not up on these things, you can still read Grand Central, but if you do know them, your reading will be enhanced. Does that make Grand Central snobby and elitist? By way of answer, let’s look at a couple of specifics. The title refers to Psalm 137 in the Bible—“By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept…” The “we” here are the survivors of the Kingdom of Judah who were deported to Babylon after being conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar and are grief stricken over losing their home. I didn’t know this reference, I read about it in the fine introduction to Grand Central by Brigid Brophy. Before this, I thought the title was about someone in New York City who was grief stricken, someone who expressed themselves poetically. In fact, I thought the book was about this someone, and, of course, it is. But if you understand the reference to the Psalms, your understanding of the book is deepened. The protagonist is experiencing not only a romantic grief in New York City, but an epic grief which is akin to the feeling of being deported from a beloved home. Similarly, we find this passage early on: “One day along the path he brushed my breast in passing, and I thought, Does this efflorescence offend him? And I went into the redwoods brooding and blushing with rage, to be stamped so obviously with femininity, and liable to humiliation worse than Venus’ with Adonis, purely by reason of my accidental but flaunting sex.” Now we’ll get more into the context for the passage later but for today’s purposes, we find a reference to Venus and Adonis. Because of a slight collision with her estranged beloved, the protagonist feels she is liable to a worse humiliation than that which Venus experienced with Adonis. Sounds bad in itself. You don’t have to know the story of Venus and Adonis to get it. She’s embarrassed to the point of running off into the woods, and she associates this somehow with being a woman who because of her form can’t help but be enticing even though she doesn’t want to be. Incidentally, “efflorescence” means “a crystalline or powdery deposit of salts often visible on the surface of concrete, brick, stucco, or natural stone surfaces. It occurs when water leaves behind salt deposits on the masonry surface.” Cool. So somehow, her lover brushing her breast in passing affects her the way a deposit of salts might mark a stone. Very cool. The story of Venus and Adonis comes from the Metamorphoses by Ovid, although it’s also the subject of a poem by Shakespeare. “Venus, the goddess of love, is smitten with Adonis, a hunky young shepherd who accidentally dies after being attacked by a wild boar. In Ovid’s version of the tale, Adonis is the willing lover to Venus, however, in Shakespeare’s ironic and comic interpretation, Adonis does not repay Venus’ admiration and despite his resistance she still attempts to court the young man for physical intimacy.” So it seems Ms. Smart drew more on Shakespeare’s account which emphasizes the rage and shame Venus experiences at being rebuffed. It’s interesting to learn about Venus and Adonis; it increases one’s appreciation for the story. But if you don’t know or don’t find out, what happens? A slight irritation, a feeling of insult that Ms. Smart was smarter than you? That she’s rubbing it in? A smarty-pants? Hmmm. Some might even conclude Ms. Smart was pretentiously concerned with showing how well-read she was. Come on. Don’t read it then. I think Ms. Smart was alluding to Shakespeare in her writing not to ride on his coat-tails or be a braggart, but to provide a cue to the reader. This book, Grand Central, is a poetic work and I want you to read it that way. Even if you have to take the energy to look them up. the allusions serve to help the reader understand the text. Instead of the protagonist saying, “He brushed my breast, and it felt like a deposit of salts on stone because he was so cold about it. I was big time embarrassed and ashamed because I didn’t want him to think I bumped into him on purpose to express my feelings about him. I’m trying to play it cool but am having a hard time.” Instead of that, we get efflorescence and Venus and Adonis. The use of the metaphor of salt deposits and of classical allusion collapses a lot of information into more compact and elegant prose. #ByGrandCentralStationILayDownandWept #ElizabethSmart

The ending of The Moslem Wife tells us what the story is about—the point—if you will. We talked last week about how the style of the story shifts, with the past imperfect sections diminishing, the appearance of paragraph breaks. There is also a greater use of Netta’s consciousness, more in her own language and voice than that of the Narrator’s. Here’s a nice example: “Not a hope, she was trying to tell him…If I say it, I am free…If I relied on my memory for guidance, I would never have crept out of the wine cellar. Memory is what ought to prevent you from buying a dog after the first dog dies, but it never does. It should at least keep you from saying yes twice to the same person.” In brief, in this ending of the story, we have Netta reporting to various people about what she’s been up to during the war—in a letter to Jack, in conversations with one of the Indian sisters and with Dr. Blackley. We learn that Netta has survived at the hotel, while beset by Italian and German soldiers, by her looney mother-in-law. She has survived in part by having a sexual liaison with an Italian officer, who provided her with food. It was a bad time, the hotel was shelled, she experienced death and destruction. She did what she had to in order to survive. Finally, Jack returns, somewhat tardily. I’ve always found the last several pages ambiguous, open to the reader’s imagination as to what occurs between Netta and Jack. But after several more times of close reading, I’m going to call it. I think what Ms. Gallant wants to show in The Moslem Wife is that, for all her resolve to reject Jack, all her anger, Netta accepts him back to her bed, to her life. She is a survivor but not a hero. In our time of long overdue, greater emancipation of women and gender rights equality, this ending may disappoint some readers (me, a little). We want Netta to be more resolute, more independent. We struggle to imagine her life with a man who abandons her and expects to be taken back when he’s good and ready, a man who is rather vacuous and insensitive. A more satisfying ending might be one in which Netta tells Jack to, well, hit the road, Jack. But, despite great misgivings, she doesn’t. “He pulled her into an archway where no one could see. What could I do, she asked her ghosts, but let my arm be held, my steps be guided? “Later, Jack said that the walk with Netta back across the Place Massena was the happiest event of his life. Having no reliable counter-event to put in its place, she let the memory stand.” That last line is very interesting, so let’s try to unpack it. It’s kind of indirect free speech, in that it could be Netta’s voice, it could be the Narrator’s. The implication is that she wouldn’t let the memory stand if she had a reliable counter-event to put in its place. If her memories of Jack’s misbehavior were more reliable, she wouldn’t keep the memory of him saying the walk with her was the happiest event of his life. She wouldn’t believe him, but memory is unreliable; it’s the thing that keeps her saying yes twice to the same person, when she should know better. Netta decides to accept Jack back. Despite giving every indication of being a competent adult, she is dependent on him. She believes she must have a man in her life, that she cannot survive without one. The point is that she is still the Moslem wife. We might not agree with her choice, but that is the story. We want Netta to survive, to find more happiness, but we cannot choose for her. The Narrator looks back with anger at those who imposed on Netta. But the Narrator’s voice is eventually crowded out, and Netta makes her choice. We, the readers, are left with a troubling and powerful emotional experience. Tragedy lurks here, my friends. “Oh, thought Netta, I am the only one who knows all this. No one will ever realize how much I know of the truth…and she let the first tears of her after-war run down her wrists.” Next week a new story, Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Till then. #TheMoslemWife #MavisGallant

What is the style of The Moslem Wife? By way of review, fictional style can be thought of as the implied author, an entity who mediates between the text and the real flesh and blood author, in this case, Mavis Gallant. Each particular story has its own style, expressed in terms of narrative structure, use of language, use of time, etc. It is the way the story is told. As readers of the all important last blog entry know (we happy few!), my theory about Wife is that it’s told by a Narrator who is the protagonist, but looking back from the vantage point of many years after the events described. From that place, the Narrator understands more of her earlier motivations and actions, and is generally nurturant and forgiving to her younger self. This short novel is written in two tenses—generally the past tense, to indicate things that have been completed in the past, and what I like to call an imperfect past tense, which indicates actions that, while complete in the past, have a repeated quality that are not fixed to a discrete moment. Thus, we find an entry like this: “One day, she overheard an English doctor, whose wife played bridge every afternoon at the hotel…” This is a specific, completed event in the past. And then: “If, by chance, Jack found himself drawn to another woman, if the tide of attraction suddenly ran the other way, then he would discover in himself a great need to talk to his wife.” Here, indicated by the construction “would discover,” the event is not fixed to one discrete moment but occurs over a series of them. The story is told in close third person that focuses on the protagonist, Netta. It is her inner experience that is shown and commented on by the Narrator, who sometimes comments on the thoughts and motivations of other characters but never shows their consciousness. The story is highly episodic. As I previously mentioned, it encapsulates a long period of time, actually twenty-five years, into thirty-eight pages of prose. It does this by picking out key scenes from Netta’s life that show her character and by collapsing large areas of moment-to-moment time by the use of the imperfect past tense. If we consider our concept of “what do you do when I can’t see you?” meaning the way the text omits mundane time, there’s a lot missing. We are not shown Netta doing anything that does not relate to the story. Thus, things begin with a kind of prologue that shows Netta with her father, who is signing a ninety-nine year lease on the hotel. It is her destiny to run the hotel. Then, the story describes the hotel and a young Netta’s life in it, and her attraction to her younger cousin, Jack. It accelerates into their romance and marriage, showing a Netta increasingly making excuses for her husband’s behavior. We get the story of Iris Cordier and her father, and one involving Jack’s mother, Vera, who moves into the hotel, faking illness to get her way. These are discrete events which further Netta’s story, both showing other people trying to manipulate and use Netta for their own ends. Then the story shows Netta agreeing that Jack should leave on a sort of holiday, a separation framed as being for his sake, not hers. WWII prevents them from reuniting. Up to this point—roughly half of the whole—the text is unbroken by chapters or paragraph breaks. But now, we get a series of paragraph breaks, occurring every two or three pages of text till the end. Curious, no? A further change in the style is that, in this second half, the imperfect past tense is largely dropped in favor of past tense scenes that tell the tale of Netta’s experiences during the war and the eventual return of her husband. Netta writes a letter to Jack that accounts for some of what has happened but tears it up. So, a period of some twenty years is shown in the first twenty-two pages, and then the last sixteen pages present events over a five-year span. As a result, the second half has a different feel, choppier, more harsh—which is quite in keeping with the content. In the first half, there is distance from the reader to the characters, in the second, Netta is brought painfully close. Brava, Ms. Gallant. Metaphor is also used to collapse and compress time. And to link sections of the story together. The bedroom in the hotel that Netta picks for she and Jack to share “was deeply mirrored, when the shutters were closed on hot afternoons a play of light became as green as a forest on the walls, and as blue as seawater in the glass. A quality of suspension, of disbelief in gravity, now belonged to Netta. She became…as watchful and reflective as her bedroom mirrors.” Later in a key passage, “The looking glasses still held their blue-and-silver water shadows, but they lost the habit of giving back the moods and gestures of a Moslem Wife.” The mirrored bedroom with its closed shutters witnesses Jack’s lovemaking with Netta, later her lovemaking with a young American (busy, busy), and finally with an Italian officer during the war—although this last may have been coerced. In a similar fashion, three little girls stay at the hotel early on; they are the daughters of an Indian Maharajah. Jack teaches them to play tennis. Later, after the war, one of the daughters——now an adult—returns to find Netta. A nice way to express a number of things, including the passage of time. The Moslem Wife is a short story in terms of length, and this may be part of the reason for the compression of time—there’s simply not enough space. Perhaps a hallmark of the short story from is the need to leave out scenes and characters that don’t further the story, as opposed to a novel which may include sub-plots and considerable digressive detail. It would be interesting to know if Ms. Gallant considered a longer form for this story. I for one would have been happy as a clam to read a lot more about Netta and Jack, Dr. Blackley, and wacky Aunt Vera. But it could be that part of the beauty of the book is in its succinctness. An art of omission, if you will. (I will). Next week, I want to look closely at the ending and offer some thoughts on—what’s the point? Happy New Year to all! #TheMoslemWife #MavisGallant

From the outset, the Narrator entity of The Moslem Wife expresses cutting judgements of the characters, skewering their vanities and exposing their vulnerabilities. The first sentence is a prime example: “In the south of France, in the business room of a hotel quite near to the house where Katherine Mansfield (whom no one in this hotel had ever heard of) was writing “The Daughters of the Late Colonel, Netta Asher’s father announced that there would never be a man-made catastrophe in Europe again.” Here, the writer Katherine Mansfield is mentioned, a real person whose presence in time and space gives verisimilitude to a work of fiction. Yet the Narrator-person doesn’t just mention Ms. Mansfield, it comments parenthetically that no one at “this hotel” had ever heard of her, a not so subtle dig at their ignorance. Parentheses are interesting beasties. “…a set of marks to regulate texts and clarify their meanings, principally by separating or linking words, phrases, and clauses, and by indicating parentheses and asides.” This certainly is a rather caustic aside. Then, in the second paragraph, we find: “Who would have contradicted Mr. Asher? Certainly not Netta.” Who is speaking here? Netta? The Narrator? Both, possibly, in a sort of free indirect style. It’s certainly the Narrator poking some fun at Mr. Asher’s blowhard comments. He’s speaking in 1920 about WWI, and of course WWII proves him terribly wrong, although he’s been long deceased before it occurs. There’s actually a quality of sadness here, in that the child Netta is part of this scene; she witnesses her father’s comments, accepts them as truth, is perhaps comforted by what he says. The tragedy is that, twenty years later, she will experience first-hand the deprivations and destruction of WWII. Tragic irony, if you will. The Narrator has an assured and deeply intimate view of Netta, but it is described not in Netta’s language, but in the Narrator’s—a phenomenon we saw in “In the Skin of a Lion.” Netta, we are told, finds other men besides her husband, dull. “She never mentioned this. For one thing, both of them had the idea that, being English, one must not say too much. Born abroad, they worked hard at an Englishness that was innocently inaccurate, rooted mostly in attitudes.” These are not conscious self-appraisals by Netta and Jack; these represent the Narrator “telling” us about what sort of people they are (or were), using the Narrator’s language and thoughts. Jack is described by the Narrator: “He was like someone reading several novels at once, or like someone playing simultaneous chess.” Does anyone think such things about themselves? I actually am reading several novels at the same time, but this is not a metaphor, but fact, best beloved. I don’t live a metaphor. (No?) But wait! Here’s another possibility, generated during middle of the night brooding. The Narrator could be Netta looking back at herself. A future Netta using the language she possesses in the future, showing and reporting on the past, both the actual events and the way she felt about them. This theory throws new light on the quote cited above. “Who would have contradicted Mr. Asher? Certainly not Netta.” This could be Netta remembering her childhood relationship with her father. It would indicate that an older Netta has become much more cynical and critical of the others in the story. She wants to show a past wherein she was condescended to, and taken advantage of by the others. She’s looking back with a vengeance. I like this theory. It fits well with Mavis Gallant’s tendency to write almost memoir-like stories (witness the Montreal tales). Do I think Netta in The Moslem Wife is a veiled (no pun intended here) Ms. Gallant? No, not literally. Ms. Gallant did not run a hotel on the Riviera in the 1930’s. However, perhaps some of the character’s thoughts and feelings, the kinds of people she encountered and their behavior toward her are drawn from life. So for clarity’s sake, the storytelling triumvirate would now be, Mavis Gallant, the actual author, Netta as the Narrator—a character in the story telling the story (but not as an “I”), and the style, of which we will have more to say. The present time of the story is the story’s future, if you will. And this new theory about the Narrator also has implications about the ending. Whoa! This blog is really dashing through the snow. To all those who celebrate—Merry Christmas! #TheMoslemWife

A new story this week, dear friends, The Moslem Wife by Mavis Gallant, first published in The New Yorker in 1976. The story is included in the New York Review of Books edition entitled Paris Stories. It’s my first foray into examining shorter fiction—Wife is thirty-eight pages, so one of the things I want to look at is how the shorter form interacts with the story—which would be part of the story’s style—if you’ve been paying attention. (Of course I’m paying attention, Mr. Big Shot. What choice do I have?) Despite its brevity, the main part of Wife covers a span of some thirteen years, from 1932 when the two main characters marry, to 1945, when they come together after a long separation coinciding with WWII, although I think it’s fair to say the ending is ambiguous and open as to what happens next. The title—which is perhaps insensitive by today’s standards—refers to what the protagonist, Netta, overhears herself called by a guest at the hotel she runs in the south of France. Its meaning is ambiguous as well, suggesting she is dutiful and subservient to her husband, Jack, and that he is unfaithful to her—a condition she gradually accepts. But it’s ambiguous because, like much of the text, this comment is someone else’s opinion and maybe unreliable. Netta must gradually make decisions about what it true for her. The story focuses on her transformation from being the “Moslem Wife,” to not being the “Moslem Wife,” as the narrator interprets it, and then shows how she was affected by WWII, and her reaction to being re-united with her husband. It’s often interesting to consider the significance of character’s names. Netta may simply indicate a shortening of Antoinetta, yet it also makes the opera fan think of the hapless victim Netta in Pagliacci. (Dena thought of that). Coincidence? I don’t know. In keeping with things so far, let’s identify the trio of beings who tell this story. There is the real author, Mavis Gallant, a Canadian woman who moved to Europe and lived most of her life in Paris. There is the narrator of Wife, a fascinating creature about whom we shall have much to say. And there is the style of the (short) novel (or long short story). There won’t be much discussion of Mavis Gallant, the flesh and blood author. Does this put me in the camp of those who are only interested in the text itself? The text itself, they say, could be read anytime, anywhere, and the meanings would be generated not by when it was written, by whom, and how, but by itself. Huh. I do think the context matters. An interesting exercise is to think of the difference it would make if you learned a different author had written a story rather than the one you thought had. (Sorry about that sentence). Maybe an author with a different ethnicity and/or gender. Let’s say you think you’re reading a story by Dostoevsky and you find out it was actually written by Agatha Christie. The meanings would change—the reading would change. But as far as I can tell, such is not the case with Wife. The style is powerfully Mavis Gallant, and we will need to examine just what this style is in blogs to come. So I do think context matters, but I feel like it’s not terribly interesting. I think what’s really interesting is how each reading is a unique combination of a text and a reader. The narrator of Wife is very assured. There is no suggestion of it being unreliable or ever unsure of its perspective on things. From the beginning, the narrator tends to make sarcastic, sometimes withering judgements of the characters who comprise Netta’s world, her father, many of the other hotel guests, her mother-in-law. The narrator establishes separation between Netta and the others—including Jack, as the story grows. The others’ opinions are put into doubt. Netta, who is rather sweet and forgiving in the beginning, is set against fools and cheats like a pearl set on a bed of stone. (A what? The Simile Sheriff objects). As far as the story’s style, let’s say at this point that it is third person, and strictly past tense or preterite. Thus it “provides a grammatical means of indicating that the event being referred to took place in the past.” This is significant although easily taken for granted. The story is told by a narrator who knows the end at the beginning. It’s interesting to note that Ms. Gallant said she imagined the last scene of Wife first and then went back to write what led up to it. A good way to write stories. There is significant historical context; the story is set around WWII. In fact, the war is almost another character in Wife. It upends Netta’s life; out of its death and destruction comes enormous change. #MoslemWIfe

An interesting thing to note about Lion is that four of the characters—Patrick, Hana, Caravaggio, and Clara—appear in Ondaatje’s next prose book, The English Patient, a work I have written about here. In English Patient, Hana and Caravaggio become more central, Patrick dies. At the end, Clara appears in Hana’s thoughts and in letters. It’s not unheard of to have characters migrate from one book to another; it happens all the time in series like Lord of the Rings. Perhaps this migration in Ondaatje’s books is a bit different though. Is English Patient a continuation of Lion, the fact that they are two separate books just an artifact of publishing? I don’t think so, best beloved. It is not Lion Part One, Lion Part Two. Son of Lion. Let’s plunge once again into this fictional world. Is there one story that weaves through both books? Not a single main one, but there are some similar themes about searching for things and people missing, about the porous nature of national borders. There is an interesting complementary relation between the use of dynamite in Lion, and Kip, a central character in English Patient, who by defusing bombs, tries to prevent things from blowing up (Dena thought of that). But I believe Lion and English Patient are stand-alone books. They may share characters, although the Hana of English Patient is not the same Hana of Lion. Nor is Caravaggio. They are both changed profoundly by the trauma of war. Patrick doesn’t really appear in English Patient; he’s referred to. Same with Clara. The two stories may share characters but are “about” different things. We’ve talked about how English Patient is about people recovering (more or less) from the trauma of war. What is Lion about? About 244 pages! (Uproarious laughter). No, no, no. Get a hold of yourself, man. A good way to think about what a book is about is to consider how the characters change. Nicholas Temelcoff “never looks back…But he pauses now, reminded about the details of the incident on the bridge.” This occurs after Patrick has visited him in his bakery and reminds him about his work on the bridge and how he saved the nun. “Nicholas is aware of himself standing there within the pleasure of recall. It is something new to him. This is what history means…Patrick’s gift, that arrow into the past, shows him the wealth in himself, how he has been sewn into history. Now he will begin to tell stories…That night in bed shyly he tells his wife the story of the nun.” So Nicholas becomes self-reflective and begins to tell stories. He has a sense of having done something important. Caravaggio and Hana do not change so much in Lion; it is later in the English Patient that they do. Alice dies. Clara doesn’t change so much, her significance, along with Alice, is how they change the main character, Patrick Lewis. Patrick begins as a little seed, living with his father in Canada’s far north. After the story of Nicholas and the nun on the bridge (Alice), he re-appears as a young man in Toronto where he becomes a searcher for Ambrose Small and meets Clara. “He normally took months to approach someone, and at the slightest rejection, he would turn and never go back.” With Clara, he does go back. They become lovers and travel to her friend’s (Alice Gull) farmhouse. Patrick is “…happier and more at ease than he had ever been.” But: “There was a wall in him that no one reached. Not even Clara, though she assumed it had deformed him. A tiny stone swallowed years back that had grown with him and which he carried around because he could not shed it…Patrick and his small unimportant stone. It had entered him at the wrong time in his life. Then it had been a flint of terror. He could have easily…spat it out and kept walking, and forgotten it…So we are built.” So: Patrick changes, but there is a wall inside him he cannot get rid of. But: “She had entered him like a spirit, bullying his private nature…She started laughing, the hair on her temples still wet after their lovemaking…As he held her, he still didn’t know who she was.” So: Clara causes a struggle inside him. Clara leaves him for Ambrose. “…And you must never follow me. It takes me a long time to forgive. Don’t worry, Patrick. Things fill in. People are replaced.” And then Alice and Patrick become lovers. Patrick learns more about love and connection with Alice and is deeply affected by her death. In his grief, he sets fire to a casino, is imprisoned, and then, once released, attempts to destroy the Waterworks. However, Commissioner Harris stops him and takes pity. Patrick returns to care for Alice’s daughter, Hana and ultimately journeys with her to re-unite with Clara. The wall inside him is torn away. “All his life Patrick Lewis has lived beside novels and their clear stories. Authors accompanying their heroes clarified motives. World events raised characters from destitution. The books would conclude with all wills rectified and all romances solvent. Even the spurned lover accepted the fact that the conflict had ended.” That’s the heart of Lion right there. The author, the implied author, the model author, accompanies its hero and clarifies the hero’s motives. We learn why Patrick pursues destruction in the context of Alice’s death, as well as in the larger context of historical and cultural events. Lion does conclude with the end of his conflict as he is united with the women in his life. Real life is not so tidy, so clear. Being a novel, Lion has the freedom of having an ending; it is punctuated in a particular way. Lion is magnificent. #IntheSkinofaLion

In The Skin of a Lion has not one but two scenes in which Patrick Lewis is sketched. Early in the story, his father Hazen “outlined the boy’s body onto the plank walls with green chalk. Then he tacked wires back and forth across the outline as if realigning the veins in his son’s frame. Muscles of cordite and the spine a tributary of the black powder fuse. This is how the boy remembers his father, studying the outline which the boy has just stepped away from as the lit fuse smoulders up and blows out a section of plank where the head had been.” The context for this scene is that Hazen is learning to become adept with dynamite so that he can hire himself to logging and mining companies. There’s no way around it though, it’s an odd education. He outlines his son on some wood and then arranges fuses and wires so that he can precisely blow-up certain areas of the board—like the outline of his son’s head. Life with my father was no walk in the park, but he never did anything like this. Call Protective Services! In any case, it’s an evocative scene. Patrick’s form is recreated in a particular, possibly unique way and then altered. A type of performance art, you ask? Maybe. Actually, there’s never any suggestion of danger for Patrick, and his father is generally portrayed as a good guy. Manly fun, eh? Boom! Annette Hilger makes some wise comments about this scene and the circumstances of Patrick’s childhood, pointing out that Patrick’s mother, Hazen’s wife, is never mentioned. The effect is that Patrick is raised solely by a man. Masculine nurturance. “The father’s violent extraction of his son’s form also foreshadows the self-destructive element inherent in man’s construction of self.” Dr. Hilger then contrasts this with the second scene of Patrick being “sketched.” He is together with Clara and Alice at the farmhouse, and falls asleep while the two women remain awake. …they say to each other, “Let’s get him.” “In the darkness of the farmhouse, Clara and Alice approach his bed. They carry candles and a large roll of paper, whispering to each other. They uncover the face of Patrick hidden in the green blanket. This is enough. The candles are placed on a straight-backed chair. They cut the paper with draper’s scissors and pin the four corners of it to the floor. They begin to draw hard and quickly, as if copying down a blueprint in a foreign country. It seems as illicit as that. Approaching a sleeping man to see what he will reveal of himself in his portrait at this time of night…They have done this often to each other, these spirit paintings, the head leaking purple or yellow—auras of jealousy and desire. Given the vagueness of his covered body, they draw upon all they know or can guess about him. They kneel, their heads bright beside the candlelight, crayoning against the texture of the floor. Anger, honesty, stumble out. One travels along a descant of insight and the other follows, completes the phrase, making the gesture safe. A cave mural. The yellow light flickers upon his face against the sofa cushion, upon the two women sweating during the close night, their heads down as if pulling something out of a river. One leans back to stretch while the other explores the portrait. ‘Are we witches?’ Alice asks.” ‘Kay. So apparently, those scamps Clara and Alice have covered Patrick in paper while he sleeps and make a life-size copy of him with crayons. Do they color him in? I don’t know, my friends. I do think there’s something powerful in this scene as there also is in the previous one with Patrick’s father. In that one, a copy of Patrick’s life-size image is altered with fire by his father; in this one, two women again copy him, copy a “blueprint” for a man, perhaps to understand a mystery? What do they learn from doing this? It’s not one of the things shown in the story. His father “copies” him in order to learn about fire and creative destruction; the women “copy” him as a way of “getting” him, of capturing his spirit, I think. It’s significant that while his father blows up the area of the board representing his head, the women uncover his head and only sketch the rest of him. (Uh, why is this significant?) It’s significant because his father focuses on the head, the center of consciousness. The women copy his body, the site of sensuous sensation. Together, they make a whole Patrick. Patrick doesn’t become human till he is involved with women, before that he’s a consciousness, somewhat immortal. When he encounters the women, he experiences human feelings of connection and loss that are not present before. They “teach” him to be human. There is an intriguing third instance of the body’s appearance being altered, the scene in which Caravaggio is covered with blue paint so that he can “disappear” and escape the prison. The fact that Patrick is sketched twice makes it meaningful. What’s going on? you ask. Patrick is the hero of Lion. Like Gilgamesh, he undertakes an ordeal and a quest when he journeys beneath Lake Ontario to enter the Waterworks through the intake tunnel. The book sketches him; the book shows him being sketched. In both scenes, he is passive, and he is immortalized. Both key scenes are shown by the narrator from a very hidden position. In the first, the narrator quickly describes things, and then, “this is how the boy remembers his father, studying the outline where the boy had just stepped away from as the lit fuse smoulders up and blows a section of plank where the head had been.” So, the narrator is still doing its thing but has jumped to the future, describing the adult Patrick’s memories. The second scene is similar. The narrator shows Clara and Alice surrounding the sleeping Patrick and drawing him, making a “spirit painting.” Then they go outside into the night to run in the rain. There is another shift where the narrator shows what Clara sees, “Clara sees Alice subliminal in movement almost rising up into the air, shirt removed, so her body can meet the rain.” Patrick apparently sleeps through it all. A sound sleeper. #IntheSkinofaLion

In a previous post having to do with a different book, I wrote about What Do You Do When I Can’t See You—that phenomena in fiction of the reader only being given certain particulars about the characters’ lives. Real life is lived moment to moment, a stream of sometimes random experiences that is often so mundane that we don’t pay much attention. Fiction more or less erases much of the mundane, leaving scenes that further the story and the development of the character. It is not random, unless it’s striving to give the illusion of randomness. How does this phenomena manifest in Lion? A third of the way into the story, in the section entitled The Searcher, we read about Patrick being with Clara Dickens in Paris, Ontario, and how the couple are joined by Clara’s friend Alice Gull—whom we have encountered before in the story. We know that Patrick met Clara as part of his attempt to find Ambrose Small, the mysterious millionaire who has disappeared. Clara has been Ambrose’s mistress, and Patrick tries to get her to tell him where Ambrose is. They—she and Patrick—become lovers. How does Lion convey this story or plot? First, the narrator tells us about Ambrose Small, who was a “real” historic character. We are presented with several newspaper headlines, told some details of Ambrose’s life in third person, past tense prose. We learn that Clara, an actress, became his mistress, and that he disappeared. The family put up a reward, and ordinary people began searching for him. Then the narrator takes us to the particular: “In 1924, after working for a year at various jobs in Toronto, Patrick Lewis became a searcher.” Patrick is befriended by Ambrose’s sisters who tell him about Clara. He goes to see her. We are told these things in two or three sentences. There are no dramatic enactments of these events. “Patrick took the train to Paris, Ontario, and met the radio actress Clara Dickens. She stood in the hall beside her mother and said she would not speak about Ambrose Small.” Well. A lot is omitted here, and rightly so. Somehow Patrick gets from Point A (when he becomes a searcher) to Point B (when he meets Clara). The reader must infer quite a bit about his motivation (He needs money? Something about being a searcher captured his imagination?), about how he befriended the sisters, about how he bought the train ticket to Paris, Ontario. We are not shown his thoughts as he walked up to the front door of Clara’s house, his feelings when she refuses to speak about Ambrose. We must infer his determination—Clara refuses to speak to him, but Patrick presses on to get what he wants (although it’s quite a journey before he actually finds Ambrose—and, at that point, he’s actually seeking Clara). How much time elapses? We get a start date of 1924; that’s about it. We must infer the amount of time, say maybe two months from Point A to Point B? Could be three months or two weeks. It’s not that important unless you’re horribly concrete in which case you probably shouldn’t be reading a book like Lion. But it is a critical piece of what sets fiction apart from “real” life. In creating this passage, Ondaatje had to answer a key question that writers of fiction must constantly answer: How do I show the manner in which my character Patrick met my character Clara? It’s a major part of the story. He could just write, Patrick met Clara after being directed to her by Ambrose Small’s sisters. That would compress about six pages of the text into one sentence. What would the consequences be? It would distance the reader from both characters; they can be brought much closer by writing complex dramatic scenes about how the two met, expressed through poetic, erotic language. Okay. Let’s continue. The text shows how Patrick is smitten by Clara. There is flirting. Then: “When he went back the next morning she opened the door…” Well, that’s interesting. We are not shown Patrick deciding to leave Clara’s, not shown what the heck he does that night, not shown how he decides to return the next morning. Not that it’s a surprise, but it seems likely that more than twelve hours have elapsed. What did Patrick do, think and feel during this time? We may infer he thought about Clara. Perhaps if Patrick were a real person, this is the way he’d remember the time he met Clara—what did I do that night when I left her house? he’d say. I don’t know…went back to my room, I guess. Had dinner. I really don’t remember. What I do remember is that the next day I went back to see her. I’m not suggesting that Lion should show these more mundane moments of the character’s lives. Actually, if the book did show us Patrick returning to his hotel room and eating a chicken dinner with four bottles of beer, we would conclude this was significant to the story. And it isn’t. Texts can be distinguished by how much or how little they show less important scenes. On one end, we have stories that show things moment to moment. Umberto Eco said it best when he described pornographic films as being distinguished by this approach. If a character in such a film goes to get a can of Sprite from the refrigerator, the viewer sees the whole thing—walking to the kitchen, opening the door, rummaging within, etc. On the other end of the continuum, we have a text like In the Skin of a Lion, a text that is highly episodic, that presents a story with a lot of space and a lot of hidden-ness. A much more open (open to interpretation) text that the reader must work harder at to comprehend, work harder at and bring more of her/his own intelligence to. Happy Thanksgiving! #IntheSkinofaLion

Let’s consider some implications of the narrative style of In the Skin of a Lion. Umberto Eco suggests that a text contains three entities that interact with the reader. There is the author, the real person who wrote the book. There is the narrator, who may be a character in the text who speaks in a kind of storyteller voice—identified as “I” or “We,” or who may be unnamed and nearly invisible. Then there is what Eco calls the “model author,” the style of the novel, a textual strategy—"a set of instructions which is given to us step by step and which we have to follow when we decide to act as the model reader.” And the model reader is defined as “the ideal type whom the text tries to create and sees as a collaborator.” In other words, a text cues the reader to read it in a particular way. If a story begins “Once upon a time…” we are cued to read a fairy tale. Let’s look at how these three entities appear in Lion. The real author’s name, Michael Ondaatje, is displayed on the cover of the edition I’ve been reading, 1987 Vintage International, and there’s a photo of Ondaatje and a brief bio on the first page. A head shot, he’s smiling, bearded. He lives in Toronto, has written several books, and is a poet as well as a novelist. Maybe the thing of most significance here is the part about being a poet. One might therefore expect Lion to contain poetic language, which it does. The narrator appears a bit in the first section as a voice—not an “I” or a “We”, telling the reader information about logging in the early twentieth century. It is in the next section, The Bridge, that the narrator increases its presence. Last week, I wrote about this section in depth and don’t want to repeat things, but I’ll say here the narrator presents what I called a “documentary” style of telling the reader how the flat-bed truck carries fire in the dawn, how the bridge is made, how immigrants work on it, how they live in Canada. It is impersonal, as if someone is relating things learned in an encyclopedia. But that mode is then combined with the story of Nicholas Temelcoff and the nun who’s blown off the bridge, showing it in close third and first person narration. And the model author, the book’s style, appears all through this, a subtle phantom guiding the reader with shifts in narrative style, structure, character. The beginning quote from Gilgamesh (which is picked up later on), and the introduction that shows Hana and Patrick going to get Clara, are both the model author’s work. What is the model author’s strategy in Lion? What instructions is it giving the reader who wants to be the book’s model reader? The title is a good start toward understanding. A quotation from the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh lets the reader know right away that the story is not fairy tale, nor a Tom Clancy style adventure. Gilgamesh? Yes, best beloved, a mythic tale about a king with superhuman power, strength, and courage who wishes to become immortal. Huh. One could say that by using this title and reference, the book is instructing the reader to read Lion as if it were an epic poem about heroism. Annick Hillger writes some fascinating stuff in her book Not Needing All the Words Michael Ondaatje’s Literature of Silence, about how Babylonian myth crops up in Lion, particularly in the portrayal of the female characters. (More on this another time). Yay! And the other epigram at the beginning, the one from John Berger—Never again will a single story be told as if it were the only one. That’s a pretty strong instruction from the model author about how to read the story—not as a single narrative, but a collection of stories about particular events. (Wait, wait! Hold up—how can there be this model author guy? You made this up, and you’re trying to make it seem more scholarly by dragging in Umberto Eco, who’s dead and can’t defend himself. The author, Michael Ondaatje, wrote the book. Period. I agree with the other guy—Pretentious Bully. Where’d he go anyway?) Peering into audience. The other guy is…on vacation. However, you raise an important question. (Let’s see you answer it then). A real author can write more than one book, but each book has its own unique author. (Double-talk). To use a different language that describes similar phenomena, if the reader agrees to be seduced by the text, she/he becomes a model reader. Lion wants its readers to understand the logic of the book, the way it’s framed by the journey Patrick and Hana take, the premise that Patrick is telling Hana the story that the reader reads. It wants the reader to “get” that things begin with “Little Seeds,” a story about Patrick’s youth, that his father works with dynamite and teaches his son his trade. That dynamite and explosions are a theme throughout the book. Patrick ultimately tries to dynamite the Waterworks because of his rage and grief over Alice’s death in an explosion of dynamite. He tries to honor her anarchist beliefs by plotting to destroy the symbol of a modernist society that exploits the poor, the immigrants. These things are all particular to In the Skin of a Lion; they do not pertain to other books by Michael Ondaatje. Do you understand, best beloved? (Grumbling sounds) Lion also wants the reader to accept and appreciate that the model author uses its own poetic language to show the inner life of people like Patrick who are not educated and literate. And it wants the model reader to understand the structure of the book, the converging narratives of Patrick, Nicholas, Caravaggio, Alice. The leaps in time—the way the story of Patrick’s youth ends and shifts to Nicholas’ story which becomes the story of how Alice stopped being a nun. By using converging narratives, interweaving historical facts and people, by leaping around in time, Lion is offering instructions on the nature of reality in the book, a different, non-linear reality. Reality is not a linear narrative about one main character, on the contrary, the story veers deep inside other characters who reflect a story about the construction of the Prince Edward Viaduct and the Waterworks in Toronto. #IntheSkinofaLion

Last week, I threatened to write about In the Skin of a Lion’s narrative structure. Going to do it today. The book is often described as being a prime example of post-modern narration, and that links up with the quote from John Berger. “Never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one.” Post-modern narratives offer converging stories, stories told from different perspectives about the same events. Let’s consider the second section of the novel, “The Bridge.” “The Bridge” tells the story of the construction of the Prince Edward Viaduct in Toronto, circa 1918. It’s told from the perspectives of four entities: a narrator, Nicholas Temelcoff, an unnamed nun, and Commissioner Harris. The narrator starts things off: “A truck carries fire at five a.m. through central Toronto, along Dundas Street and along Parliament Street, moving north.” The narrator continues to describe the construction workers arriving at the bridge work site, showing this with the powerful image of a flat-bed truck moving through the dawn, carrying a burning cauldron to melt tar. A moving object of fire in the darkness. The narrator discusses the construction of the bridge, presenting information in what I want to call a “documentary” style: “There are over 4,000 photographs from various angles of the bridge in its time-lapse evolution. The piers sink through bedrock fifty feet below the surface through clay and shale and quicksand—45,000 cubic yards of earth are excavated. The network of scaffolding stretches up.” One gets the sense of the narrator being in a library or archive, turning the pages of albums full of old photos, marveling at the magnitude of the project. I think too, the passage is reminiscent of the voice-over to a documentary film. Time-lapse? Calling Ken Burns. In fact, this is exactly what Michael Ondaatje did, spending weeks, it’s said, in the Toronto Public Library, researching Lion. So is the narrator Michael Ondaatje? This imagined narrator’s voice? How is it that the text, made from ink and paper, evokes a clattering documentary film? Next, an extremely cinematic scene is described: “During the political ceremonies a figure escaped by bicycle through the police barriers. The first member of the public…cycling like hell to the east end of the city. In the photographs he is a blur of intent. He wants the virginity of it, the luxury of such space. He circles twice, the string of onions that he carries on his shoulders splaying out, and continues.” Again, you get the sense of someone in the future looking at photographs—but now there is something new. “He wants the virginity of it, the luxury of such space.” There’s a sensuous cue for the reader of carrying a string of onions on one’s shoulders, the way they splay out with motion of the bike. Either the narrator is imagining how the cyclist thought and felt, or the text has swooped in to the cyclist’s consciousness. Or both. And in either case, the narrator's poetic language is being used, not the cyclist's. (Irritating, whiny voice: Mr. Pretentious Bully, Mr. Bully, excuse me, sir, but you just asked some questions and didn’t answer them. I’ve been waiting for the answers. Who is the narrator? Will you please explain it now?) Clearing throat. Yes, thank you for reminding me of something I was trying to avoid. Who let you back in anyway? But, yes, who is the narrator? Maybe if you could bear with me a bit, it will become clearer. Maybe—have you ever heard of rhetorical questions? Aside—turn that microphone off! Next a story is presented involving a character who becomes quite important later on—Caravaggio, who is working on the bridge and has an argument with a foreman. It’s said, he is angry, and that, when he “quits a year later he will cut the thongs with a fish knife and fling the blocks into the half-dry tar.” (this refers to the tools the men use to work with tar). So the narrator appears to be looking at a photo or grainy documentary film of the men working on the bridge, and focuses on a particular individual whose feelings are imagined. And what he will do a year later is described. Is this omniscience? The narrator “sees” old photos of the bridge and is able to also see inside the people and the events of a year later. Now, the style shifts. We have the close third-person story of Commissioner Harris, first in a description in imperfect tense of how he “would” go to see the bridge at night, and then a particular night when he witnesses a group of nuns who walk onto the uncompleted bridge in the darkness. One of their party is blown by strong winds off the bridge. It’s of note that, not only were the Prince Edward Viaduct and Commissioner Harris real, but there was an incident of a nun being blown off the bridge, her body never found. Of course, the fictional nun survives and becomes a major character in the novel. That night, ropes off the bridge suspend a man named Nicholas Temelcoff, a daredevil construction worker. He catches the nun as she falls; the shock of it dislocates his shoulder. They hang on to each other and perilously make their way to safety. They go to a restaurant that’s closed for the evening, are let in, and Nicholas sits with the nun, who does not speak or otherwise reveal her name. This story is told through the perspectives of both Nicholas and the nun, passing freely back and forth, moving very close into their consciousness. There is quite a bit of story presented about Nicholas and how he emigrated to Canada from Macedonia, how he became expert at daredevil maneuvers as a construction worker, powerful images of how he flies through space and fog. There is also more general information about the emigrant experience, learning to speak English by watching silent films and listening to popular music. The section ends with Nicholas returning to work and hearing about the nun’s disappearance, an event he does not speak of. A year later, it’s written that he will open a bakery with the money he’s earned working on the bridge. One of the things we should note here is the writer’s very fine control of distance, meaning the way the text zooms in and out, sometimes in what I’m calling documentary style, sometimes in intense close third-person narration. It’s difficult for me not to use film metaphors, because I think they’re evoked so strongly in Lion. Zoom. Okay, those questions. Is the narrator Michael Ondaatje? Nah, the narrator is pretty close to the writer, but the writer—Ondaatje—is writing about the narrator. They are separate. Is Lion an example of omniscient narration? No, sir. This is somewhat a judgement call, but an omniscient narrator is defined as one who knows everything, the whole story, and I don’t think that’s what’s being presented in Lion. There is a lot the narrator doesn’t know—for instance, why does the nun decide to take advantage of the accident which provides the freedom to change her life? The narrator shows her obviously struggling to decide but there’s nothing about how or why she decides, about who she is or was. As the book develops, the reader must infer this for her/himself. In this episodic story, there is a lot of space. I don’t think the narrator pretends to know what’s going on all the time. #IntheSkinofaLion

This week, a new story, Michael Ondaatje’s 1987 book, In the Skin of a Lion. At times, the past becomes bit murky, but I believe I first read Lion before The English Patient, Ondaatje’s best known novel. I knew Ondaatje was a great writer and was also attracted by the Toronto and Ontario settings of the book, as my father’s family was Canadian. (Loud whiny voice: I wanted to pick the next book. You promised I could. You said.) I see. What is it you had in mind? (Something more interesting than the ones you pick. If I picked a book, Mr. Big Shot, thousands would read the blog. Millions. A vampire book, or an adventure. In the skin of a what?) Let’s move on. I have since read Lion many times (six, seven?). I often turn to it for inspiration in my own writing; the poetic prose is thrilling, the elliptical structure engrossing and mysterious. I love the story of Patrick and his love for Clara and Alice. I relish the opportunity to read it again and try to generate coherent analysis. The title “works hard” for the story, meaning it resonates and supports a tale of love and loss. The first thing a reader may encounter (unless they skip over it, wanting to begin with Chapter One—I confess I did the first time) is a quote from the Babylonian myth-story Gilgamesh. “…when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion.” Does this convey rage at death? P’rraps so, best beloved. When you die, I will be so grief-stricken, I will kill the most savage of beasts and wear its skin as a symbol of my pain. And in the story, there will be death and loss. There is an additional quote from John Berger, “Never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one.” I don’t know where this is taken from, but it gives a significant clue to the book’s structure. Lion is a story told from several perspectives, although I wouldn’t call its style omniscient narration. We’ll have to look at this more closely. (Oh, boy). There is a story here, but it’s not told in a linear manner. The style is episodic and very close to the subjective experience of the characters. The book is often described as being a prime example of post-modern narration, and that links up with the quote from John Berger. Let’s save that issue for another week. (Sigh of relief. Loud and theatrical). But let’s note that the whole story is a blend of fact and fiction. Significant elements are based around “real” events, parts of Toronto’s history like the building of the Prince Edward Viaduct and the Waterworks with its intake tunnel beneath Lake Ontario. Commissioner Harris was a real person, as was Ambrose Small. A nun really was blown off the viaduct and never found. Back to the book’s structure. Next there is a sort of introduction (in italics, which sets it off from the rest of the text) that embeds the whole story as a tale told to a young girl during a six-hour car journey to Marmora, which, if you check, is a town in Ontario between Toronto and Ottawa. This incident is not referred to again till the very end, where the reader can realize that Lion is a story told by a slightly feverish man to a young person during a long car ride. Technically, a framing device, I believe it’s called. The first section of the novel is called Little Seeds, which refers both to an image of the protagonist being wary of retaining traces of gunpowder on his clothes which might ignite, and to the image of a human growing from experiences which might be called seeds. (We should note that explosions are a central motif in the story—boom!). The novel begins, “If he is awake early enough the boy sees the men walk past the farmhouse down First Lake Road. Then he stands at the bedroom window and watches: he can see two or three lanterns between the soft maple and the walnut tree.” We might remark right off that this is in present tense (the whole section later shifts to past). There is an immediacy here, a raw description that puts the reader deep into the subject’s sensual experience. A child attends to things adults take for granted; he is entranced by lantern-light moving among trees. The beginning goes on to develop what the boy is watching, the way the men (loggers) stop to let a herd of cows pass and reach out to touch the animals to gather some of their body heat. “The boy who witnesses this procession, and who even dreams about it, has also watched the men working a mile away in the grey trees. He has heard their barks, heard their axes banging into the cold wood as if into metal, has seen a fire beside the creek where water is molecular and grey under the thin ice.” Whoa! That’s mighty fine writing. Readers of this blog probably know what I’m going to say—yes, there is a narrator entity telling the story. An entity who knows the boy’s experience, even his dreams, his imagination. But who translates it to a poetic, adult language. It would be a rare child who would experience hearing “axes banging into the cold wood as if into metal,” or that water could be “molecular and grey.” It's not Patrick telling the story to Hana during the journey to Marmora—his language is also not so poetic. An entity is mediating the boy’s experience. It is the style of the book; it is the implied author. More next week. #IntheSkinofaLion

The ending of Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is rather open and ambiguous—to me, at least. It’s quite possible Andrew Miller might read my thoughts here and say, “Huh? No, you didn’t understand my book at all.” (Reminds me of the film, Annie Hall, where Marshall McLuhan chastises a fellow who’s spouting off about his writing). I’m going to risk it. But it does bring up an important point. Two people can read the same story and reach two different understandings. An author can create a story and have the curious experience of having readers understand it in a different way then the author intended. The process of reading is a group effort. So. After the climax of Lacroix and Emily killing Calley, there’s an anticipation of what happens next—what does the story want to reveal of the future? And how to end the novel? Lacroix tends to Ranald, buries Calley, and returns to Emily. As he returns, he sees, “…the mast-tips and royals of a ship, something big, broaching the northern horizon. He was stunned.” It is doubtless the Chiron, the ship that carries emigrants from Scotland to Canada, a vessel and function that has been foreshadowed. He tells Emily he has seen it. Then he tells her he thinks Calley was not just a nutcase, but under orders to kill him, that other assassins will come for them both. “Then, he told her what he intended to do.” It becomes clear, I think, from the text that what he intends is to rendezvous with the Chiron and sail away to Canada, thereby escaping those who would harm him. Emily wants to go along. They pack and Lacroix leaves letters of explanation for Cornelius and Jane, and for his sister Lucy. They head for the boathouse. A rowboat is there, also foreshadowed. However, it does appear to be leaking, but Lacroix decides that’s no big deal. He gets Emily in the boat, and they set out on the ocean to rendezvous with the Chiron. “At what he reckoned was a good half-mile from the shore he saw that the water in the bottom of the boat was now deeper by about an inch. Perhaps two. Did it matter? If they were sinking, they were sinking very slowly and would have time to row back to safety.” (Lacroix is not a sailor). They continue and are taken along by a current. No sign of the ship. Now we are on the last page. For some reason, Lacroix peers into the water, where he sees creatures. “Small, with bodies like globes of purest glass, their legs trailing under them like ribbon, like soaked cotton…And once he started to watch them he could not stop…The creatures, animate bubbles that fed, quite possibly, on light itself, were trying to teach him something he did not know he would be able to bear.” He looks at Emily and is astonished to see she has taken the silk bandage from her eyes. Her eyes are shut, but she has (to Lacroix) “an expression of deepest joy, the same face she might have shown the congregation at her father’s house in the days before the dreams turned sour.” She speaks the last line of the novel. “John! Now we shall be entirely free!” The first time I read the book, I was stunned by the ending. Upset, actually, because I read it as showing that Lacroix and Emily were about to drown in a sort of mutual suicide pact. I was hugely disappointed while, at the same time, deeply impressed with the drama and pathos. I was surprised at something I wasn’t expecting and maybe a little mad. I grasped at the possibility the ending was literal, that the next thing that would happen would not be death but rescue by the ship that would take them to Canada where, if they didn’t necessarily live happily ever after, they would live. This second read-through I don’t know if it’s much clearer, best beloved. We readers know that throughout the novel, Lacroix thinks of suicide as justice for his actions in Spain, a prime example being during his sea-voyage to the Hebrides during which he considers the ease of drowning himself. I believe the primary motivation for killing Calley rather than accepting death, is that Lacroix wants to protect Emily. If it was just him, I wonder if he might have offered Calley no resistance. The title of the book can be troubling here, as it picks up ambiguity. Literally, the characters could be entirely free by living. But the title has a disturbing reference to death, of a religious sense of being entirely free of the cares of life. Sour dreams. However, we also have some interesting counter-arguments to this suicide theory. First, on the sea voyage, Lacroix doesn’t slip over the side and die. In fact, he remains with the living and acts heroically to protect a sailor from impressment by the British navy. Then, we have his confession to Emily and his evident relief at being forgiven—at least by her. There’s a sense in which this exchange frees him. And we have a strong foreshadowing of the Chiron taking people away to Canada, a place where, again, they may be free of poverty and oppression. (a lot about being free). So he’s got reason to live, he’s got a means of escape. He’s got a woman who loves him, and he’s faced his fears. So why does he head out in a leaky boat with Emily and then get mesmerized by what—shrimp in the water? Plankton? Call a whale, man. The passage I quoted above sort of feels like he’s giving up. There’s no clear answer here. I’d like to think Lacroix and Emily rendezvous with the Chiron and escape to Canada, to freedom. A lot could happen after the novel’s end. How easy is it, by the way, to stop a large sailing ship in order to pick up two souls in a rowboat? I don’t know. I do know Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is a great book that raises important issues about violence and war and reactions to trauma. I highly recommend it. The openness of the ending only seduces the reader more. #NowWeShallBeEntirelyFree