This Canadian novelist and poet’s work is obviously popular with some reviewers and award committees having won many prizes and been translated into many languages. This is her latest novel. I sometimes think, however, that my personal enjoyment and appreciation of books is inversely related to their popularity with such reviewers, as was the case here.
This book spans the time from 1910 to 2025, with chapters that appear in no logical chronological order that I could discern. If there is a unifying plot, I completely missed it. What there is are scattered observations mostly of a philosophical nature, about what it means to fight wars, be human, and to love and be loved.
A few ethereal quotes may demonstrate why this concrete thinker found this mercifully short book, confusing and disappointing. I recognize that for some others this aspect of it may be what they enjoy and appreciate.
“To visit Helena and his mother on leave and then to return to duty was a transition so unreal it should have turned him mad; it would have been better to lose one’s mind than to retain that residue, enough left of oneself to spatulate and sift the madness, like a chemist frantically seeking the antidote to his own poisoning.”
“Is that not what the human body is, is that not our own kind of photosynthesis-are we not chemistry that transforms light?”
“ In Maria’s experience, the supernatural was purely the presence of good, the love that burns free of the corpse; always love that tries to escape the human error.”
My recommendation: ‘Don’t waste your time.’
1.0/5
Thanks Din.
The Passionate Reader 