Return Stroke

by Dora Dueck

These graceful, probing personal essays by award-winning fiction writer Dora Dueck engage with a diverse range of ideas (becoming a writer, motherhood, mortality, the ethics of biography, a child's coming-out) because in non-fiction, she writes, ""the quest for meaning bows to the experience as it was."" Yet within Return Stroke, one theme in particular does resonate--change. ""How wonderful,"" the author writes, that our ""bits of existence, no matter how ordinary, are available for further consideration--seeing patterns, facing into inevitable death, enjoying the playful circularity of then and now."" The book's title, Return Stroke--the title of one essay, where it literally refers to lightning--suggests such a ""When I send inquiry into my past, it sends something back to me."" The topic of memory, in all its malleability, impermanence, and surprising power, is especially central to the collection's concluding piece, an absorbing memoir of the author's 1980s life in the Paraguayan Chaco. Whether she is discovering the more meaningful part that imagination holds within her religious faith or relating with astonishing clarity and honesty the experience of giving birth away from her home country, Dora Dueck's beautifully written essays and memoir make her an insightful and generous companion.

234 pages, Hardcover

Published February 10, 2023

Reviews

[Micah Enns-Dyck · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow, whoever proof-read this did such a good job :)

[Gabriele Goldstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dora Dueck's writing is known to be deep and thought-provoking. This memoir, with a Mennonite focus, reflects on universal experiences. Thoughtful essays about being a newly-wed in a foreign place, being a parent, a wife, and persisting as a writer. Like her previous works, I hang on every word. A book to be slowly savoured.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an engaging memoir by an accomplished fiction author. The bulk of the book deals with her several years living in Paraguay as a young mother.

Since my own background does not intersect with the Mennonite experience in Latin America, I wished that more of the memoir dealt with her Canadian life. I was especially moved by the short "As he lay dying" because of the parallels in my own life.

My own preference would also opt for mess reflection on the writing and meaning of memoirs and more on the stories that Dora Dueck tells so well.

[Melanie Springer Mock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read most of Dueck's novels, and she is an accomplished fiction writer. Return Stroke shows that she is a fabulous memoirist, too, and this is now my favorite of her work. I appreciate the opening essays, as well as the longer piece of memoir, "In The House of My Pilgrimage," about the time Dueck and her family worked as missionaries in Paraguay. Her contemplation on memoir, memory, family, home, what it means to be Mennonite, the missionary impulse: these are all woven beautifully together. This book makes me want to continue writing!

[Jacquie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I especially enjoyed the memoir from her time in Paraguay. It makes me want to go there.