Sunday, March 10, 2024

HOW DEEP IS THE LAKE

Shelley O'Callaghan. HOW DEEP IS THE LAKE: A Century at Chilliwack Lake. Caitlin, 2017.

I have owned this copy for some time and decided to read it after reviewing the Caitlin catalogue. I don't think it lives up to the book blurb because I get no sense of awareness of the issue of land and Indigenous people. For example, the fear of and battle against expropriation, when what else was done to Indigenous land if not expropriated by the Crown? Did not they too feel the encroachment of all these uninvited neighbours, including American fishermen, church camps, and provincial prison camps? The opportunity to feel and express empathy seems lost. I also find the title poorly edited [missing ? and repeated word, "lake"] and not really indicative of what the book is about, which seems to be one family's attachment to a summer cottage grouping on the shores of Chilliwack Lake in the Cascade Mountains south of Chilliwack, BC. I was also confused by the switching between metric and feet measurements. The calculations of lake depth were done in feet while all other measurements seem to be in metric. 

That said, I did finish reading it, for local history and geology and geography if nothing else. I have lived in this valley for over thirty years but I have never been to this lake. I did get that feeling of envy, of a family that holidays together, and couples that have the type of lifestyle that supports three weeks every summer getting away into the wilderness. That is not and has never been my experience. I was also looking for but had to go elsewhere to find out about the diverging course of the Chilliwack River, why it no longer runs through downtown Chilliwack, and for info about Sumas Lake, drained for land reclamation. If the grandfather worked for Water all his career, would he not have been aware of if not involved in the decision to divert the river, change watersheds, drain a lake, etc? I did learn in my research how Sumas Lake sometimes drained into the Nooksack and sometimes drained into the Fraser. Not Chilliwack Lake, but linked, because Chilliwack Lake water ended up in Sumas Lake. Many other changes over time, especially travel arrangements, are well documented. 



Monday, February 26, 2024

HOUSE MADE OF DAWN

N. Scott Momaday. HOUSE MADE OF DAWN. Harper & Row, 1966 & 1989. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Absolutely beautiful. Incorporates some pages from The WAY to RAINY MOUNTAIN. Abel returns to the reservation from war, from prison, from the city, and participates in ceremony.




Saturday, February 10, 2024

The WAY to RAINY MOUNTAIN

N. Scott Momaday. The WAY to RAINY MOUNTAIN. UNewMexico, 1969. An anniversary edition. Read in honour of the writer who died recently. Watched a PBS doc on him last week. 

I have read a lot of work by Indigenous writers and this is by far the most beautifully written. Kiowa story-telling techniques braided with memory and archaeology reports. Illustrated by the writer's father. 

N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his HOUSE MADE of DAWN.




Sunday, February 4, 2024

PILGRIM

David Whyte. PILGRIM. Many Rivers Press, Langley, WA, 2014.

Another of my local writer finds on the trip to Bellingham and Seattle. Love the Irish connection. 









Tuesday, January 23, 2024

THE VULNERABLES

Sigrid Nunez. THE VULNERABLES. Riverhead, 2023. 

A friend gifted me this book saying it was "more my style" than hers. And she is right. I came to suspect that this writer has been reading my drafts--novels and memoir. She has a section called Interlude while I just finished a section called Intermission in my memoir. 

Although presented as a novel, it really feels like a memoir. So convincing, the voice of the unnamed narrator, a writer experiencing writer's block, during the lockdown, while bird-sitting a pet parrot Eureka and his friend, a troubled youth she calls Vetch.

This is the first COVID lockdown story I have read. It brought back memories, and challenged some of the American experience which seemed different from ours. But I most enjoy the way the writer has made something out of nothing, and the glimpses she gives us into the writer's brain, filled with inspirational quotations from other writers and speculation about why we do what we do.





Sunday, January 14, 2024

OLD BABES IN THE WOOD

 Margaret Atwood. OLD BABES in the WOOD. McC & S, 2023.

Short stories about memory and widowhood. On some list of the year's best. Well worth the read. A great way to start the new year. 



Tuesday, December 26, 2023

THE SKELETON ROAD

Val McDermid. THE SKELETON ROAD. HarperCollins, 2014.

A book loaned by writer friends, this is my fifth Val McDermid and I only discovered her last year. A Karen Pirie story set in Kirkaldy, Edinburgh, Oxford, and Dubrovnik, the plot returns to the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the ethical grappling with "war crimes" and the International Criminal Court. The skeleton initiates the quest for a killer seeking private justice. 



HOW DEEP IS THE LAKE

Shelley O'Callaghan. HOW DEEP IS THE LAKE: A Century at Chilliwack Lake. Caitlin, 2017. I have owned this copy for some time and decide...