The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
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was the silence<br />
<strong>of</strong> the angels who sweep.<br />
("<strong>The</strong> Angels who Sweep 11")<br />
Of the three stories in <strong>The</strong> Last<br />
Landscape, "Klara and Lilo", "<strong>The</strong> Writer",<br />
and "<strong>The</strong> Bouquet", only the first seems to<br />
belong with the poems. But if this is truly<br />
the "last landscape" (Waddington is now in<br />
her mid-seventies) that is perhaps sufficient<br />
reason for including them. And surely it is<br />
also time for a reassessment <strong>of</strong> Waddington's<br />
substantial contribution to Canadian<br />
literature—her stories, her critical studies,<br />
and her thirteen volumes <strong>of</strong> poetry.<br />
In Pain<br />
Anne Cameron<br />
A Whole Brass Band. Harbour Publishing $16.95<br />
Lee Maracle<br />
Sundogs. <strong>The</strong>ytus Books $12.95<br />
Reviewed by Robin McGrath<br />
Anne Cameron's new novel, A Whole Brass<br />
Band, is the story <strong>of</strong> Jean Prichard, a single<br />
mother who loses her job, her apartment<br />
and her father all in one devastating week.<br />
Instead <strong>of</strong> giving in to despair, she packs up<br />
and heads back to the small B.C. fishing<br />
town where she was raised. Despite some<br />
initial resistance from her children, the<br />
family settle in and start rebuilding their<br />
lives. <strong>The</strong> death <strong>of</strong> a daughter, and a crippling<br />
accident, slow down Jean Prichard's<br />
progress towards a better, fuller life, and by<br />
the end <strong>of</strong> the book she realizes that there is<br />
no way to escape the pain <strong>of</strong> living, nor<br />
would she want to.<br />
One <strong>of</strong> the more disappointing aspects <strong>of</strong><br />
this novel is that we get none <strong>of</strong> the documentary<br />
detail that can make fiction so<br />
compelling, even when the plot and the<br />
characterizations aren't particularly gripping.<br />
Here we have a primary character<br />
who runs not one, but two fishing boats,<br />
and we learn little or nothing about fishing,<br />
although learning to fish is central to<br />
Prichard's development and the strengthening<br />
bond within the family. <strong>The</strong> wharfs<br />
and the boats that are so central to a fishing<br />
community here are as vague and unrealized<br />
as fuzzy photograph, but you always<br />
know what people are eating. We are given<br />
recipes for hot chocolate, fancy mashed<br />
potatoes and 30 second Italian salad dressing,<br />
all <strong>of</strong> which which suggests that the<br />
author might be more comfortable in the<br />
kitchen than on the high seas.<br />
Language and dialogue have been identified<br />
as Cameron's strengths in the past, but<br />
here, too, there is little to praise. All the<br />
characters sound alike, with the exception<br />
<strong>of</strong> one daughter who irritates her family,<br />
and the reader, by "speaking in italics " all<br />
the time. <strong>The</strong> compound words the author<br />
is so fond <strong>of</strong> (helluvan, buttinski, buhzillionaire,<br />
etc.) fail to snap, crackle or pop,<br />
and the tired, cliched spoonerisms slide<br />
from the pages in exhaustion. Nor do the<br />
endless stream <strong>of</strong> "folkisms", the farts in the<br />
mitt, and the shit on the stick that made an<br />
earlier appearance in Kick the Can , have<br />
any life left in them at all.<br />
According to the publisher's biography<br />
that accompanied the review copy <strong>of</strong> A<br />
Whole Brass Band, Anne Cameron began<br />
her career at the age <strong>of</strong> twelve by writing on<br />
toilet paper. How appropriate for an author<br />
whose aim, in this book at least, seems to<br />
be to identify a hundred and one ways to<br />
say "shove it up your ass". Cameras, toilet<br />
brushes, shotguns, sand, tranquilizers, the<br />
list <strong>of</strong> items various characters are invited<br />
to insert in their anuses seems endless. If<br />
every "fuckcrapChristfrigginfartshit" were<br />
excised from this book, the work would be<br />
shorter by about one third its length, and a<br />
good thing too. Certainly we hear language<br />
like this in the streets and in our homes<br />
every day, and it adds to the realism <strong>of</strong> the<br />
dialogue, but in A Whole Brass Band, even<br />
the third person narrator averages about<br />
three obscenities a page and it gets incredibly<br />
tiresome.