Dear Evelyn by Kathy Page

“He and Evelyn were on holiday, in Devon in the summertime. They walked arm in arm on a path that took them past mounded rhododendrons and azaleas, past stately trees and broad lawns. On the hill behind them stood a sandstone manor house covered with purple wisteria, ahead of them an oak wood which shimmered with bluebells. Evelyn wore a light, sleeveless summer dress and a white cardigan and big, film-star sunglasses. As they entered the wood she removed them, breathed deeply, turned to Harry, smiled.”

This passage comes late in the novel Dear Evelyn by Kathy Page, winner of the 2018 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

The novel begins with Evelyn and Harry when they are children, Evelyn raised by a mother who tolerates her father’s alcoholism, and Harry a scholarship boy at a public school. Both find escape in books, Harry in the work of the First World War poets and Evelyn with Daphne du Maurier. They meet at a library, two young people determined to make better lives for themselves than their parents did. For Harry it is love at first sight – then and for always.

Then comes the Second World War, and separation while Harry serves overseas. Then the years of upward mobility and children born and raised. Harry never wavers from his role as responsible father and loving husband. Evelyn though grows more and more controlling, and easily irritated. But, these are people who believe in the sanctity of marriage, and this is a time when ending a marriage is seldom an option. Marriage is for life and these two are stuck like glue, no matter what comes their way. And, we see, as they do, that sometimes that is for the best.

We become an intimate witness to the married life and relationship of Evelyn and Harry. We see more clearly than they do what changes and what remains the same through easy times, and hard. Harry’s love never wavers, Evelyn is his everything.

“Evelyn was tiny now; she wore glasses with thick lenses, her hair was thin, she tried and failed to cover up the age spots on her face…He could see all that. Yet, at the same time, the woman who had lain beneath him on the grass, her firm breasts filling his hands, existed in her still.”

Dear Evelyn, a novel that will fill your heart, and break it, too.

Planet Grief by Monique Polak

This was a tough book to read, taking me back to a time in my life when grief seemed relentless, as it does for the characters Monique Polak has created in her young adult novel Planet Grief.

It is, however, one of the best books I have ever read about teenagers dealing with the death of a parent or sibling, and the hard work necessary for them to come to terms with their grief.

The story takes place in Montreal, and the teenagers we meet first are Abby, whose mother died of heart disease, and Christopher whose father committed suicide. Neither Abby or Christopher want to be at the Grief Retreat, but their surviving parents need to be there, and so do they.

I think this is an important book for anyone who wants to understand the effects of grief, and how we all grieve so differently - parents, siblings, every one of us. The feeling of being desperately alone in your grief is something that no one can understand if they have not experienced it for themselves.

The retreat is led by Eugene, a man who has had his own experience with grief, but who now has a fulfilling life and wants to help others be able to do the same. The participants each have their own story to tell. During a group discussion Eugene tells the teenagers, “What most people do not understand is that when you’re a kid and you lose someone you love, you feel like you’ve been exiled to another planet.” One of the teenagers, Antoine, retorts, “Yeah, Planet Grief”. He’s hit the nail on the head.

Over a very long two days the teenagers and their parents attend workshops, talk about their experiences and their feelings, and about the things that trigger remembrance of the death of their loved one, for one young person it is the sound of a siren. For everyone it is something.

For these kids it is not only that they are desperately missing their parent or sibling, it is the knowledge that they will grow up without that parent or sibling being part of their future. And, somehow they have to find a way to accommodate that into their lives and carry on if they are to live fulfilling lives.

Well written, sensitive and very real, Planet Grief is a great book for all teenage readers. It will help those who are experiencing grief to feel less alone, and help others to understand the grieving teen, know how to support them, and perhaps lessen their sense of isolation.

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Congratulations to Esi Edugyan on winning the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. When a book gets as much pre-publication press as Washington Black by Esi Edugyan the cynic in me wonders if it is truly as wonderful as advertised – or not. Patrick Crean, publisher of this new novel, was also the publisher of Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan’s earlier Giller Prize winning novel. He personally recommended it to me – and he was right that it is a very, very good book. This novel and this award has cemented her reputation as an author of consequence in this country and around the world. Man Booker Prize nominations for both novels also contributed.

Washington Black is the name of a young slave on a sugar plantation in Barbados. He is chosen by Christopher “Titch” Wilde to become his assistant in his efforts to build a hot air balloon and launch it from nearby Corvus Peak.

Titch is a kind man, but we discover he is also a troubled man as his past is slowly revealed as the story progresses. Titch takes on Washington as both a much needed assistant, and as an act of kindness to the child. When it is discovered that the boy is a talented artist he becomes even more useful to Titch. Their relationship is a complicated one, the need of one for the other, and the need for each to find a place of safety – first on the plantation and later in the wider world.

The only person who had ever been kind to Washington in his young life had been Big Kit, a slave who both protected him and abused him, preparing him for both death and freedom. Big Kit is always with him, even when he knows not if she is alive or dead. A sixteen-year-old Washington thinks to himself, “I recalled what Big Kit had once said about freedom – that if he did not feel like working, the free man tossed down his shovel. If he did not like a question, he made no answer. And I was trying my best to live up to this ideal, to be my own free man. But, it was quite an awakening, to leave behind Titch’s coddled world and to meet again with the brutality of white men.”

This is a novel about identity and belonging – for Titch and, especially, for Washington. Titch steps outside the expected boundaries of his own family, his only desire to escape the past, his childhood experiences, and the present day expectations he feels as the son of a plantation owner. Titch is a creative man, but flawed, and disturbed. Washington until the age of eleven knew only the brutality of life on a sugar plantation, and the very real fear of pain or death each day. It is his good fortune to be taken from that life, to be removed from the plantation and from Barbados, to such far flung places as the far north, England and North Africa. He must find his own way, and his own way of surviving. Though free, Washington is, until late in the novel living in fear of capture and possible return to his former master.

Washington Black is a great big saga of a story that takes a cast of characters on a voyage of discovery around the globe, with the reader along for the ride. And, yes, as wonderful as advertised, and well deserving of this year’s Giller!

Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves

Ann Cleeves most recent novel, Wild Fire, is said to be the last in the Jimmy Perez mystery series, though Ann has said this before. The series was originally to have been a trilogy, but Wild Fire is now the eighth in the series. It does seem, this time, that Ann has chosen to say goodbye to Jimmy Perez.

This instalment finds Jimmy Perez investigating a murder in the fictional town of Deltaness, in Northmavine, Shetland. This is territory Ann Cleeves knows well, near the town of Brae, and Busta House where she has often stayed while in Shetland.

The murder victim is Emma Shearer, a young woman who has worked for several years as a nanny for the Moncrieff family, living in their attic flat. Robert Moncrieff is a doctor, his wife Belle is a publicist. They are parents to teenagers Martha and Charlie, and two much younger children. Emma had come from Orkney, from a troubled family. She was noted for her fondness of the fashion of dress popular in the 1950s, and dramatic makeup – I pictured a sort of demure Amy Winehouse look. 

When Emma was found, dead, in a building on a property belonging to Daniel and Helena Fleming, it is the beginning of a very complicated investigation. Daniel is an architect, and Helena a fashion designer. They had recently moved to Shetland with their children Christopher and Ellie. Why Emma’s body was found here is as much of mystery as her death. The property had been the scene of another, similar, death some years earlier. Is there a connection, or is there not?

Willow Reeves arrives as investigating officer, working with Jimmy and Sandy. Willow and Jimmy have some sorting out to do about whether or not their relationship is going to continue, but regardless they must work together to solve Emma’s murder, and another, and to prevent even more people from becoming victim to a very disturbed killer.

Ann Cleeves has had a busy fall travelling on book tour with Wild Fire. “It has been a totally bonkers month. If someone had told me ten years ago that I'd be touring the country with a book, talking not just to readers but to journalists and interviewers, on radio and TV, it would have been unbelievable, a strange fantasy. I'm still pinching myself,” says Ann.

It has also been a life changing year for Ann Cleeves after the death of her husband, Tim. They met on Fair Isle many years ago, when he working as an ornithologist there. As the novel, Wild Fire, ends there is a boat arriving in Fair Isle. And, it is Fair Isle, says Ann Cleeves, “where my love affair with Shetland started more than forty years ago”. And it seems she will end the Jimmy Perez series there for now.

All Things Consoled by Elizabeth Hay

Entirely by coincidence – or demographics – Elizabeth Hay’s new book All Things Consoled arrived in the store just before I was heading west to see my elderly mother. My mother was in hospital recovering from a fall, a fractured pelvis. She was recovering very well, but her increasing loss of memory is more of a concern. She is now living with me as we make plans to move her into assisted living. She will not be happy – to say the very least. Many baby boomers are in exactly the same situation, making difficult decisions for their aging parents.

I was very pleased to learn that All Things Consoled was awarded the 2018 Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize for Nonfiction. The jury stated, "Elizabeth Hay’s loving, exacting memoir, All Things Consoled, details the decline of her elderly parents with unflinching tenderness. The path she and her family travel is crooked and long, filled with hospital beds and doctors’ visits, foggy minds, and shuffling confusion. But Hay’s prose elevates this ordinary rite of passage — the death of one’s parents — to something rare and poetic. All Things Consoled becomes, itself, a consolation for anyone despairing at the loose ends that parents leave behind. Page-after-page this is a masterclass in observation — a lesson in how meaning can emerge from grief."

Elizabeth Hay grew up moving around Ontario, with a brief time in England, with her family, her father a teacher, her mother a painter. When her parents became a worry – concern about falls, mostly her mother – the children arranged for them to move into a retirement residence in Ottawa, close to the home of daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth then spent the next several years being advocate and very “hands on” care giver for her parents for the rest of their lives.

Most interesting to me was the dynamics of the family and the behaviour of the parents, Jean and Gordon Hay. Gordon was a man with a violent temper – as was my father when I was young, my own family home not so very different. And, as with Elizabeth’s family, it was one child who experienced most of the abuse. I, fortunately, unlike Elizabeth, rebelled and like her younger sister I stood my ground. Jean Hay kept the peace, as women, mothers, wives of her generation were wont to do. Jean also ran the household like a stingy quartermaster – nothing was wasted, nothing. It was only after her children became independent that Jean made a bit of a life of her own and turned to painting as a serious pursuit, gaining a reputation as a painter of some importance.

Apart for Elizabeth Hay’s unwavering care and kindness – beyond anything many of us could come close to, I found myself wondering how she could be so kind and forgiving to her father. I know – we love our fathers regardless of whether or not we respect their actions. But – how could she forgive him for leaving behind, in the family home, all of her own books, as each were published, with loving salutations to her parents. And, how sad that Jean had to live in a place where she did not have a studio – no matter that she could no longer work as she had before.

For Elizabeth the death of her parents was the end of their need for her – though perhaps not her need for them. I imagine that All Things Consoled was a way of putting both her childhood and her years as caregiver to her parents into some sort of order. And for all of us, perhaps a way of coming to terms with moving on, and letting go of the need for parental love and approval, as we look to the future, letting the past be truly behind us.