The Way the Crow Flies
Aug. 17th, 2006 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garnigalI finally started reading this month's book club book, The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald. I'm only 66 pages into it (of 713), and I've already both laughed aloud and found myself on the verge of tears.
I read her first book Fall on Your Knees a few years ago. It was compelling - dark and psychological with a gritty reality leavened by faint hope. It was primarily set in Canada's East Coast, and I certainly found the setting informed the choices the characters made and the understanding the reader had towards those choices.
The Way the Crow Flies is set in the "Southwestern Ontario Triangle". Home. In fact, she talks a lot about home and what that word means in the first 67 pages. I suspect it will be one of the major themes.
What makes me both laugh and cry is the familiarity I feel with this book. Despite the fact that it is set during the Cold War (1962), the people, the places haven't really changed.
I've read a lot of Alice Munro, who is from the area and occasionally writes about the area. However, there is enough of an age gap that I don't always recognize Munro's writing as home. The places are the same - the river hasn't changed it's course, the highway still goes to London, but her age gives her a vastly different experience of the area.
MacDonald has successfully created home in a book in a way I've never before experienced. It may be her relative youth (a few years younger than my mom), it may be her writing style, it may be I'm just more susceptible to nostalgia now that I'm old. But this book feels like an in-joke between me and MacDonald, between me and Madeline (the main character).
It may be billed as a book about growing up in the Cold War, a book about child abuse, but for me, it's a book about home.
I have a feeling I may have my illusions shattered.
I read her first book Fall on Your Knees a few years ago. It was compelling - dark and psychological with a gritty reality leavened by faint hope. It was primarily set in Canada's East Coast, and I certainly found the setting informed the choices the characters made and the understanding the reader had towards those choices.
The Way the Crow Flies is set in the "Southwestern Ontario Triangle". Home. In fact, she talks a lot about home and what that word means in the first 67 pages. I suspect it will be one of the major themes.
What makes me both laugh and cry is the familiarity I feel with this book. Despite the fact that it is set during the Cold War (1962), the people, the places haven't really changed.
I've read a lot of Alice Munro, who is from the area and occasionally writes about the area. However, there is enough of an age gap that I don't always recognize Munro's writing as home. The places are the same - the river hasn't changed it's course, the highway still goes to London, but her age gives her a vastly different experience of the area.
MacDonald has successfully created home in a book in a way I've never before experienced. It may be her relative youth (a few years younger than my mom), it may be her writing style, it may be I'm just more susceptible to nostalgia now that I'm old. But this book feels like an in-joke between me and MacDonald, between me and Madeline (the main character).
It may be billed as a book about growing up in the Cold War, a book about child abuse, but for me, it's a book about home.
I have a feeling I may have my illusions shattered.
