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A Houseful of Predators: An Unthinkable Thing

12 Monday Sep 2022

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Review: An Unthinkable Thing, by Nicole Lundrigan
Viking, 2022. 338 pp. $18

Summer 1958 has treated eleven-year-old Tommie Ware cruelly. Not only has someone murdered his beloved Aunt Celia, his guardian and center of his life; within several weeks thereafter, he’s accused of killing the three people who take him into their home.

Set in a barely identified neighborhood presumably in Canada, this remarkably taut tale of psychological suspense unfolds mostly in reverse, peeling one thin layer at a time off Tommie’s recent past in the well-to-do Henneberry household just before the triple murder. I generally avoid child-at-risk narratives, and this one scared the daylights out of me, without a ghost or goblin in sight. The monsters here are human, or pretend to be.

Thomas Mayne Daly, Canada’s first juvenile court judge, 1891 photo. The Juvenile Delinquent Act of 1908 was the country’s first penal reform separating youthful from adult offenders (courtesy Library Archives Canada, PA-025707, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in both the U.S. and Canada because of its age)

It’s not enough that Tommie’s a child who doesn’t know who his father was or why he didn’t stick around. Even before his Aunt Celia dies, one measure of his heartache is how he realizes she’s promiscuous and scoffs to himself at her claims to have found The One, a “real gentleman.” But his innocent perspective on it gets the reader—or this reader—right between the eyes:

I chewed my cookie and tried not to listen anymore because I knew my aunt wouldn’t recognize a proper gentleman if one jumped up and bit her. Mrs. King [a kindly neighbor] had already explained it all to me. How to charm a girl with flowers or chocolates. Holding open the door. Angling the umbrella so she didn’t get wet when it was raining. But the men my aunt invited up kept their shoes on. Called her ‘dolly.’ Slurped soda through their teeth. One took our Sears catalogue to the toilet after he’d eaten supper and didn’t bother to shut the door. My aunt seemed blind to it.

His mother, Esther, a live-in servant at the Henneberrys’ manse, gave him to Celia to raise but must now take him back. You begin to see why she parted with him in the first place and why his tenure there is untenable, despite her assurances. She cares about her son, but she lacks backbone, and the Henneberrys control her, for reasons Tommie can’t fathom. They control him too, and therein hangs a tale.

Raymond Henneberry, the head of this household, has inherited wealth and a successful dental practice. His philanthropy has kept his less savory side from public view, especially his womanizing and financial shenanigans. He exploits the boy’s presence, which he resents, for his own gain.

That’s partly why his unstable, pill-popping wife, Muriel, takes a shine to Tommie, whose name she can’t always remember. She dragoons him into chores like massaging her feet or joining her on bizarre errands by car, a risky business, given her addiction to drugs that impair her reflexes and sense of judgment.

To Tommie’s bewilderment, Mrs. Henneberry makes much of him, perhaps to annoy her only child, fifteen-year-old Martin, then pushes Tommie in his direction. He’s a most unsuitable playmate, for Tommie or anyone sentient, being a sadist pathologically obsessed with sex.

Were Tommie an adult, he’d have had a bushel of motives to kill the Henneberrys. Ironically, the bits of his trial transcripts that close several chapters reveal nothing of the kind; the victims’ predatory nature is secret. Rather, the testimony paints them as upstanding, tragic figures and young Tommie as cold-blooded, vile, and monstrous, transferring their faults to him. Allegedly, the forensic evidence has him locked in.

I wonder how an eleven-year-old can stand trial, presumably as an adult. I wonder too how the judge seems so variable in his rulings (not as erratic as Mrs. Henneberry, if on the same spectrum). But if you can get past that, you’re in for quite a ride, which doesn’t end until the novel’s final sentence.

Five years ago, I reviewed another fine (altogether different) novel of Lundrigan’s, The Widow Tree, and apparently, she’s written several others. Yet she says An Unthinkable Thing was the most challenging and complicated to write. Without having read the others, I believe her. I admire how she unearths the Henneberry madness grain by grain, in such a way that you understand what Tommie can’t, increasing the tension and your connection to him.

The boy’s passivity is enough to make you scream—I kept wanting to shake him and say, “Speak up, already!” But you also understand how life has undermined him at every turn. I find Esther, and her passivity, less comprehensible. Her opacity serves the storytelling—a drawback, I think—and though she’s on stage far more than her sister, Celia, I feel I know the latter better.

Conversely, Muriel Hennebury is floridly, blood-curdlingly disturbed; no mistaking anything, there. I feel some sympathy for her, but none for her son, who reminds me of a spoiled-brat Fascist-in-training, though that image, if intentional, comes across subtly. The narrative has other political messages, notably the connection between wealth and impunity before the law, and though I’m ready to believe the Henneberrys’ wealth serves to conceal their excesses, I’m skeptical about how far that seems to twist the investigation into their deaths and Tommie’s prosecution for them.

Despite that, An Unthinkable Thing compelled me to finish reading. If you pick it up, I defy you to put it down again.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

War, Destroyer of Souls: Three Day Road

24 Monday Aug 2020

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Review: Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden
Penguin, 2005. 368 pp. $17

Toward the end of this harrowing novel about the First World War, a soldier narrator remarks, “We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the one facing what we do to the enemy.”

So says Xavier Bird, thinking of his boyhood friend and brother in arms, Elijah Whiskeyjack. Neither name actually belongs to them, for they are Cree, a Native people of Canada, and white people have bestowed those handles on them. Likewise, the prejudice the two friends face in the ranks of the Southern Ontario Rifles runs deep, embodied in their insecure, less-than-capable immediate superior, Lieutenant Breech, who views them as alien to begin with, though with gradations that fit his convenience.

Photo of a nighttime German barrage on Allied lines, believed to be Canadian troops at Ypres, 1915 (courtesy On the Fringe of the Great Fight by Colonel George G. Nasmith, C.M.G. Mcclelland, Goodchild & Stewart Toronto 1917, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the United States)

Or separate them, rather, to Elijah’s frequent gratification and Xavier’s constant pain. Xavier grew up in the backwoods, but after his mother’s death when he was very young, attended a repressive religious school until his aunt, Niska, rescued him. Elijah, whom he met there, came to live with them later, and Xavier taught him all the backwoods skills he has. They became skilled hunters, and at the front, they conduct the ultimate hunt — or Elijah does, anyway. Hence Xavier’s remark about reckoning with what one does to the enemy.

But that’s not where Three Day Road starts, for better or worse. The novel begins with Xavier, one leg amputated and addicted to morphine, coming home to a heart-stricken Niska. She believes he’s returned intending to die; and since she doesn’t know what he saw or did in France, she’s unsure what will help him.

I admire Niska’s resolve, dedication, and passionate attachment to her threatened way of life and her sister’s only child. Much of her narrative has to do with hardship and sacrifice, with rare pleasure cut short by betrayal. In that way, her existence parallels the soldiers’, a touch I like. The blind hatred she endures whenever she ventures into or near town etches a sharp criticism of the white men who presume superiority to her.

However, she recounts many scenes while Xavier is asleep, under the influence of morphine, or just plain silent. Such interior monologues feel like set pieces shoved into the story for the information they contain. I imagine that Boyden might have wrestled with where to put these scenes, because nearly all take place well before the war and would have hampered the main narrative had they appeared chronologically. Caught between that constraint, Xavier’s understandable reluctance to speak about the unspeakable, and his nearly constant self-medication, the author does his best with Niska’s memories. They just don’t always fit seamlessly.

But Boyden superbly re-creates the First World War, in the trenches and behind the lines, some of the most impressive descriptions of that subject I’ve ever read. Nothing purple, just plain, straight, and spot on:

Once the shelling has gone quiet, we make our way out and survey the damage. I’m surprised to see that very little looks different than it did before. There is the same mud and puddles and torn-up wagons and piles of bricks. The only real difference is the bitter smell of cordite and the sweeter smell of blood that is as rich in the air as if we’d just butchered a large moose.

I also like how Boyden has the two friends’ paths diverge, and what he does with that. Xavier’s the better marksman and tracker, though Elijah’s no slouch, and they’re both assigned to sniper duty. But Elijah speaks better English, knows how to joke, and to put himself forward, so he gets the glory. Using the Cree language, unique to them, he protects Xavier in public from Lieutenant Breech’s ornery mindlessness when he can, because he understands the white man’s insecurity. But he doesn’t share the credit for the sniper exploits, and that burns Xavier more than he’s willing to admit.

The weak link in the novel is the lieutenant, a clichéd depiction and historical anomaly. Junior officers were taught to show courage under fire to the point of recklessness and suffered higher casualty rates, on average, than enlisted men. But Breech almost never faces German bullets, a fault that his superiors would have noticed, and he’s got enough flaws as it is. Had Boyden allowed him personal bravery, the lieutenant would have seemed truer. Likewise, the two noncommissioned officers Elijah and Xavier know come across as types, the salt-of-the-earth core of any army, though each has skills that make them interesting.

Finally, since the narrative revolves around what’s essentially a squad, lack of other officers makes it seem as if Breech commands an entire company, not a platoon. Again, I understand the desire for economy, but I get a skewed, conflated picture of their battles, as the lens expands to set the stage for famous engagements, only to telescope to almost nothing.

Nevertheless, Three Day Road not only provides a glimpse of the Native contribution to Canada’s war, a subject I’ve never read about before, as a trench novel, it’s terrific.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Human Flaws Exposed: Dazzle Patterns

12 Monday Nov 2018

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Review: Dazzle Patterns, by Allison Watt
Freehand, 2018. 339 pp. $22

Clare Holmes works in a glassworks in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917, a port city that buzzes with wartime traffic. Living in the big town instead of on her parents’ farm has provoked a constant, simmering conflict with Clare’s controlling mother, Ada. But Clare has plans that Ada would never dream of. The young woman is saving up for her passage to France so that she can become a Red Cross nurse and be near her soldier fiancé, Leo.

However, when a ship blows up in the harbor, the blast destroys the glassworks and a swath of town, leaving many dead. The consequences for Clare are severe and cascading. Not only does she lose an eye, which means Ada grabs her and brings her home; Clare worries that Leo won’t want her anymore; and, worse, the post-traumatic stresses sap her desire to live. Her friends hold out hope that she’ll be able to return to the glassworks, but her job there involved checking the product for flaws, and the boss isn’t the only one who doubts she can manage that with only one eye. It’s a nice twist, the flaw-checker who feels — and is — damaged herself. And she becomes so aware of her imperfection that she can hardly get out of bed, let alone function.

But Clare is nothing if not independent-minded, and Watt has put her protagonist’s inner life on vivid display. Overcoming her disability literally means Clare has to develop another way to see the world in perspective; and when you read that she takes up drawing, the metaphor gains breadth. But her adaptation of course involves how she sees herself, and this is my favorite aspect of Dazzle Patterns. Where once Clare defined the future as being Leo’s wife, or, more immediately, staying out of Ada’s clutches and becoming a nurse, she now takes a larger view. It’s as if Clare’s loss and necessary compensation for it have let her grow in unforeseeable ways, to extend the metaphor even further.

Watt’s at her best when the narrative stays in Halifax. She portrays the home front and all its fears and prejudices with a sure hand, as well as the boarding house Clare lives in, the glassworks, and the horrific aftermath of the explosion. Here’s the destruction recounted through the eyes of Fred, a glassblower whom Clare later befriends:

Walking back to his rooming house Fred saw houses fallen in upon themselves, charred like abandoned bonfires, or burnt completely away, only the chimneys flooded with black puddles of ash and snow. Standing houses stared blank-eyed, all their windows gone. Telephone poles tilted. On the street, a breadbox, a school bag, a woman’s evening shoe, black patent with a pointed toe and a velvet bow. At the corner of Agricola and West Street, Fred brushed the snow off and righted an empty baby carriage.

But I think Fred’s less successful than Clare as a character. Watt makes him a prewar German immigrant, which allows her to evoke the jingoistic suspicion of an “enemy alien” who is actually a naturalized Canadian. I like the theme and how Watt plays it, but Fred’s a bit too good to be true, as if the chief victim of the narrative must be a paragon.

Leo’s more believable as a person, but what happens to him, less so. He’s a sapper, assisting the engineer officer who tunnels under German lines. Watt’s depiction of that rings true. But the narrative fudges on what the Western Front looks and feels like, and other details are simply inaccurate. Most critically—and I don’t want to reveal too much–Watt fails to consider what a civilian’s possession of a firearm in a war zone can mean, as in getting the entire village put up against a wall. Moreover, that entire setup seems designed to alter Leo in convenient ways, whereas leaving him as he was, though messier, would add depth and conflict.

Finally, I hope that what I read is an uncorrected proof — although it doesn’t say so — and that a proofreader will catch mistakes like the constant misspelling of Fred’s German name, and the typographical and grammatical errors that crop up.

Still, I enjoyed Dazzle Patterns. The story is compelling, Watt tells it with brio, and has provided a heroine worthy of your time and attention.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher via Historical Novels Review, in which this post appeared in shorter, different form.

Victors and Vanquished: The Translation of Love

06 Monday Feb 2017

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Review: The Translation of Love, by Lynne Kutsukake
Doubleday, 2016. 318 pp. $26

Before the Second World War, thirteen-year-old Aya Shimamura and her parents lived in British Columbia, and though they weren’t rich, they had each other and enough to get buy–a house, a little land to farm, a community. But when war came, the government shipped them to an internment camp in the interior, confiscated their property, and drafted Aya’s father to help build the Trans-Canada Highway:

They gave him a pick to dig out the boulders and a shovel to scrape at the earth–only the white foremen could set the dynamite–and they paid him twenty-five cents an hour because, after all, this was Canada where they did not believe in slave labor. . . . But then they deducted the amount he owed for his food and bunk in the road camp, and because he had a wife and child, they further docked his pay to help cover the cost of their internment in a ghost-town camp in the interior mountains that no one had ever heard of.

Matters only get worse. Aya’s mother dies, and in 1946, her father must choose between moving east of the Rockies or “returning” to Japan, the country Aya has never seen. Grieving and distraught, her father signs the paper acquiescing to their deportation, and so they travel to Tokyo, seat of the postwar American occupation, led by General Douglas MacArthur.

From this riveting, heart-breaking premise comes an uneven, scattered novel that nevertheless gives off sparks. You just know that Aya, a quiet, troubled child whose only defense against her father’s (or anyone’s) attacks is to shut down even further, is headed for pain and isolation. And so it happens. Her schoolmates, brutal at the best of times, turn viciously on the shy newcomer, who struggles to learn their ways and routines and to understand their rapid, idiomatic Japanese. Most important, however, as native to the victor’s country–they mistake her for American-born–she’s both the object of envy and a traitor.

A licensed brothel that the Japanese opened for U.S. servicemen, hoping to protect the rest of the female population. MacArthur later closed all licensed brothels (Courtesy Yokosuka City Council, via Wikimedia Commons)

A licensed brothel that the Japanese opened for U.S. servicemen, hoping to protect the rest of the female population. MacArthur later closed all licensed brothels (Courtesy Yokosuka City Council, via Wikimedia Commons).

Kutsukake excels at portraying these cultural divides and ambivalent feelings, which she casts from various perspectives. There’s Matt, an American soldier of Japanese descent who translates the carloads of letters addressed to MacArthur from Japanese of every walk of life, containing gifts, advice, praise, or, most usually, appeals to help trace such-and-such a person or aid in small business matters. Matt takes his job seriously, much to his colleagues’ amusement, because they all know that MacArthur is unlikely to read them and surely won’t act on them. But Matt understands their desperation, pride, and sense of shame, and he feels guilty wearing an American uniform, especially when many soldiers behave badly toward the Japanese, at worst, trading food to a starving population in return for sexual favors.

Then there’s Fumi, a classmate of Aya’s assigned to mentor her but torments her instead. Fumi herself is twisted by loss; her older sister, the only person who has ever given her tenderness or kindness, has disappeared. Fumi wants to write a letter to MacArthur, hoping to trace her sister, and she cultivates Aya to write it, because, after all, the newcomer speaks fluent English.

Where Kutsukake lets the story unfold, the narrative works. But after a while, The Translation of Love begins to feel too much like a collection of vignettes, intended to show different perspectives on cultural and social issues. Part of the problem is the sheer number of narrative voices, which include every character I’ve mentioned plus a raft of others, even–bizarrely–MacArthur’s son. I like Aya’s, Fumi’s, and Matt’s voices, and that of the girls’ schoolteacher, Kendo. But the others sometimes seem like talking heads, contrived to explain the way life was and either to put the characters in hot water or rescue them from it.

All the same, I was glad to read The Translation of Love. I didn’t know that Canada had perpetrated the same bigoted, shameful crime on its Japanese residents as the United States. Kutsukake also renders everyday Japanese society of that time in vivid ways, penetrating the complex social politics of shame, pride, and public persona. Consequently, though The Translation of Love falls short as storytelling, the subject matter compelled me to finish it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

A Life Not Lived In: High Rider

17 Monday Aug 2015

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Review: High Rider, by Bill Gallaher
Touchwood, 2015. 263 pp. $16

In 1867, John Ware, a young black man of strong character and dignity, realizes that he has no future in his native South Carolina. His new freedom will mean nothing, so long as any white man with a gun or length of rope may use them on him with impunity. Since Ware has always loved horses and can tame even the most ornery mule, he dreams of being a cowboy. So he sets off for Texas, on foot. It’s a thousand miles across the Deep South, and should the Klan find him, he won’t get there–not to mention that he can’t be sure anyone will hire him. Of course, someone does, and Ware eventually becomes famous as a rancher–in Canada.

John Ware, his wife, Mildred, and two of their children, 1890s (Courtesy blackpast.org).

John Ware, his wife, Mildred, and two of their children, 1890s (Courtesy blackpast.org).

Unfortunately, Gallaher lets this excellent premise–and character background–get away from him. The scenes of slavery speak loudly of cruelty, viciousness, and the struggle to maintain dignity when one is powerless. However, the tendentious commentary, which reminds me of voiceovers in language Ware would never use, undercuts the effect. For example: “Therefore, it was time to go, to leave behind this land of cruel deeds committed by heartless, single-minded people.”

The reader can tell right away who’s good and who’s not. The people who welcome Ware do so with open arms, with nary a conflict thereafter. Those who’d just as soon spit on him lose no time doing so. As a result, there’s little tension, and whatever happens feels utterly predictable, if not ordained. The only character in this novel, black or white, who has the least shade of gray to him is a disabled Confederate veteran who rows him across a river solely because he needs the toll money.

As for the setting, Gallaher describes interiors meticulously, giving you a snapshot of everyday objects. But he rushes through the outdoor scenery, which leaves me wanting a sense of place, particularly the magnificent Alberta landscape that moves Ware to put down roots in Canada.

What a shame, for High Rider could have been so much better. Comparing it to Paradise Sky (July 13), whose hero resembles Ware, underlines the point. I don’t mean that High Rider could or should have been picaresque and funny like Paradise Sky, only that the latter book explored its protagonist’s inner life and emotional transitions. By contrast, we’re informed that Ware longs to settle down and marry, and that he feels ashamed, a little, to visit prostitutes. But I don’t see him wrestling with that shame, or with what settling down means, maybe trying to imagine what it would feel or look like, how he views that next to what his parents had, and so forth. We’re also told his resentment of bigotry–not exactly news, there–or how tired he is of having to prove himself over and over and over before his white colleagues will accept him. Again, however, Gallaher never takes that anywhere, as if these observations were enough and bear repetition. It’s as if Ware never inhabits his skin, even though his skin has determined his life path.

The only quirk Ware has is a passion for breaking horses, at which he excels beyond compare. (The scene I liked the most was the prologue, in which he goes to fantastic lengths to tame a particularly unruly one.) Reading this, I wondered at the metaphor here, of a former slave asserting his mastery over an animal, who’d then be his servant–one lovingly treated, like a friend, but still. I wish Ware had pondered that parallel, or other aspects of his fascinating life. Too bad he doesn’t, and that High Rider never really gets off the ground.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Lonely Are the Brilliant: Flavia de Luce

05 Thursday Mar 2015

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Review: As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, by Alan Bradley
Delacorte, 2015. 392 pp. $25

If you haven’t met Flavia de Luce yet, you should. This scientifically precocious English twelve-year-old has narrated seven novels so far, and nothing makes her day like the discovery of a dead body or three. Like a 1950s Sherlock Holmes, to whom Flavia refers from time to time, she uses her self-taught mastery of organic chemistry to solve the crimes–facing, of course, much more official skepticism, because she’s a child, and female. But good children’s literature is nothing if not subversive, and Flavia is that, in spades.

Bench in a chemistry lab (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Bench in a chemistry lab (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Like Holmes again, her social abilities seldom extend beyond posing behind whatever mask suits her purpose to extract information. It’s more age-appropriate to be socially inept at twelve, so she’s got an advantage over fiction’s great misanthrope. Yet her tastes and impulses are an eccentric mix of beyond her years and not quite up to them, which makes for poignant, painful reading. The only friends she has are her two older sisters, who bully her but occasionally drop a crumb of warmth–almost. She craves being the center of attention, yet loathes it too. Adult readers will cringe at how she’s an unwitting accomplice in her own loneliness–at least, this adult reader does–but she’s terrific company nonetheless, an astute observer and a great wit.

In As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, Flavia has been packed off (or banished, as she has it) from her ancestral home to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Canada. But she’s not there long before a corpse falls out of the chimney–in her room, no less, wearing a curious sort of medallion. Solving this mystery will take more skills than usual, because she’s without the chemistry lab she had back home and must obey school rules, which severely restrict such things as comings and goings, and what times of day or night are fit for them.

Complicating the problem are myriad disappearances and possible reappearances, and the even greater difficulty of telling friend from foe. You see, Miss Bodycote’s seems to be a training ground for girls of special abilities, but what they’re being trained for, or by whom, is an even greater mystery.

But really, all you need to know is that Flavia can disprove the legend that the dying Horatio Nelson’s last words were, “Kiss me, Hardy,” because a de Luce ancestor tended the fallen admiral at Trafalgar. Or that if Flavia could raise the arterial blood pH of a particularly odious adult to 7.65, by a particularly sneaky means, “he wouldn’t stand the chance of a snowman in Hades.” Or that the command, “Just look at you!” is “often given to girls my age with little thought given to how difficult it is to carry out.” All that’s in just the first chapter.

As you may have gathered, you need not expect an entirely plausible tale here. You will get a tense, well-plotted mystery, however, and startling social commentary from the mouth of a twelve-year-old. Sharp as both my children were at that age, I’m both glad and sorry that Flavia wasn’t one of them.

Disclaimer: I borrowed my reading copy of this book from the public library.