Elizabeth and After

by Matt Cohen

A touching and resonant story of a man who returns to the small town of West Gull, Ontario, to mend his family’s legacy of alcohol and violence, to reconnect with his young daughter, and to reconcile himself with the spirit of his beautiful mother, killed several years earlier in a tragic accident. Elizabeth and After masterfully wraps us up in the lives of Carl and his family, and the other 683 odd residents of this snowy Canadian hamlet.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Novels

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Matt Cohen studied political economy at the University of Toronto, and taught political philosophy and religion at McMaster University in the late 1960s before publishing his first novel, Korsoniloff, in 1969.

His greatest popular success as a writer was his final novel, Elizabeth and After, which won the 1999 Governor General's Award for English-language Fiction only a few weeks before his death. He had been nominated twice previously, but had not won, in 1979 for The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone and in 1997 for Last Seen.

A founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada, he served on the executive board for many years and as president in 1986. During his presidency the Writer's Union was finally able to persuade the government of Canada to form a commission and establish a Public Lending Right program. He also served on the Toronto Arts Council as chair of the Literary Division and was able to obtain increased funding for writers. In recognition of this work he was awarded a Toronto Arts Award and the Harbourfront Prize.

Cohen died after a battle with lung cancer. A Canadian literary award, the Matt Cohen Prize - In Celebration of a Writing Life, is presented in Cohen's memory by the Writer's Trust of Canada.

He also published a number of children's books under the pseudonym Teddy Jam. Cohen's authorship of the Teddy Jam books was not revealed until after his death. The Fishing Summer was also nominated for a Governor General's Award for children's literature in 1997, making Cohen one of the few writers ever to be nominated for Governor General's Awards in two different categories in the same year.

A film adaptation of his 1990 novel Emotional Arithmetic has been produced by Triptych films starring Max von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, Gabriel Byrne and Susan Sarandon. It was the closing Gala at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007.

Reviews

[Chana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find the story line significant. It was hard to keep track of characters because the story was not sequential. There is a lot of weather and scenery in this book, which is OK but I found that eventually I was skimming those parts. The descriptions are good but the action is slow. I wanted to shake the author and say, does anything ever happen? Then things happen but the characters talk about the action in such a laconic and round about way that it makes it seem like nothing happened. I wish I could say that I though it was better, it had momentsof real potential and sometimes the descriptions, when not overlong, were about as perfect as writing can get.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner of Canada's prestigious Governor-General's Award, this is an incredibly intricate novel about a small town and its people. West Gull is in Ontario but could be anywhere in the world where small towns survive. Protagonist Carl McKelvey, who is reminiscent of Richard Russo's characters, particularly Sam Hall in The Risk Pool, returns to West Gull for reasons seemingly unknown to him and others in town. In West Gull, Carl had left an ex-wife and a daughter, a dead mother, an old father, and a reputation as a violent drunk. Hoping to rebuild his life, he reestablishes contact with his seven-year-old daughter, Lizzie, but finds that the memory of his mother, Elizabeth, who touched everyone in town to some degree and who died in a car crash when Carl was at the wheel, is a strong impediment. Now, Carl must put that memory and guilt to rest before moving on. Cohen's novel is packed with humor, desperation, and romance. (Library Journal)

A marvelous jewel of a novel, spare and beautiful and haunting and lush. Carl's efforts to rebuild his life and be a parent to his daughter are presented without filter, with all the joints and seams and ugly places exposed. A very human story, well worth reading. Highly recommended.

[Steen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't really know what to say about this one other then I finished it. I found that I couldn't keep some of the characters straight or visualize how old each were compared to the others.

It wasn't super horrible but honestly I will probably forget what happens in it before to long. It just wasn't that memorable. It was kind of interesting reading about Kingston and Napanee, ontario though. Both places I have been before. But that makes sense because Matt Cohen was a Canadian author.

I was a bit shocked at the ending and I honestly don't see how what happened changed anything or "Saved" anyone since nothing really changed.

meh.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back, many many years ago, when I worked at Indigo in Kingston, I remember this book coming in, and selling a butt-ton of them. I never got around to reading it at the time, even though it was a local author and all the things I heard about it were good. Now, in my early forties, I finally settled down to read Elizabeth and After, and I have to say that I enjoyed this just as much as I thought I might. It doesn't hurt that it's set in the near environs of Kingston - it's always nice to see your places reflected on the page.

Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"All happy families resemble each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy

I applaud this Canadian author for such a descriptive and heartbreaking story.

27 year old Carl returns to his small home town after being away for 3 years, to reconnect with his young daughter and to put behind him his legacy of violence and alchohol that had led to his divorce.

As he tries to rebuild his life, he finds that it is not an easy thing to do, in a town that has a long memory.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written. "...one of those mythic late October days - a sunset day in a sunset month when the gold and scarlet autumn leaves shine as though shining from inside, when every hill, every tree, every rock and blade of grass is etched in the perfect light." I would have given this a 5, but for me, the ending was a bit...well, not firm enough. Kind of fell apart in the last few chapters.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Matt Cohen is one of the real underappreciated Canadian Writers. This is typical of his work, lyrical, evocative and moving depictions of people torn by guilt, struggling to survive.

[Greg Heller · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant Canadian author that died far too soon. This is a book that took over 10 years to write, but is well worth it. Set in a fictional town north of Kingston Ontario.

[Baron Rothschild · Rating 5 out of 5]

...

[Anne]

Not particularly memorable.

[Barbara Gard]

didn't like it or finish it

[Diana Sandberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. It was ok. Some sporadically interesting characters wasting their lives. The kind of book that leaves me asking Why did I read this?

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic, beautiful read. A small town with unexpectedly complex characters, set against the backdrop of the tragic death of Elizabeth, the protagonist's mother.

[Tom Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was a corner store near my home where I grew up in Kingston Ontario. There was a book rack in the store that the local distributor kept filled with the usual pulp novels that he deemed appropriate for the working-class district of a university town. I bought books there and was familiar with the daughter of the owner who served behind the counter. One day she told me that she had insisted that the distributor stock the book rack with some books beyond the pulp. Contrary to preconceptions, people in that working-class neighbourhood could appreciate and buy literature. It was from that rack that I bought and read my first pieces of literature outside of the ones that I was supposed to read and didn’t from school. I read “The Master and Margarita”, “The Good Soldier Svejk” and “The Disinherited” by Matt Cohen. Truth to say, what intrigued me initially about the book was the stylized image on the cover of a naked woman running into the water. That may have intrigued me initially but what I quickly felt about the book was a real appreciation of the writing and the fact that the novel was set in Eastern Ontario and that the place that I lived in was acknowledge as a real place where real and important things could happen. That novel made a deep impression on me and was set firmly in my memory.

After working for over 40 years in a technical job and reading nonfiction, data sheets, patents and learned engineering papers, I decided to try to understand literature. A first year English course had “The Sound and the Fury” as an assigned text and that course left me with a life long conviction that the novels of William Faulkner and most literature with that were beyond my capabilities. That changed after I saw the movie “The Story of Temple Drake” on TCM. This was identified in the television listing as being based on a William Faulkner novel which I found by Google search to be “Sanctuary”. I read the book and enjoyed it. With that I attempted again to read Faulkner and found to my surprise that I enjoyed and appreciated him. I truly liked “The Sound and the Fury”. I read all of Faulkner’s novels and short stories and embarked on an attempt in retirement to read all the books that I was assigned in school but didn’t read.

With that project, I remembered the literature that I bought from that corner store and specifically remembered Matt Cohen and his novel. I liked those books a great deal. Why had I not carried on from them? With Amazon and it supply of out of print books, they were available to me. I took it upon myself to re-read “The Disinherited” and from that to read all of Matt Cohen’s novels. I’ve accomplished that now. I read them more or less in order of publication and “Elizabeth and After” was the ultimate one. Matt Cohen is an accomplished writer who is adept at telling stories about complex and with that true human relationships. ‘Elizabeth and After” is one such novel. It is a novel about set of multiple interrelated relationships. There is the relationship between Elizabeth, Adam and McKelvey and the related relationship between Elizabeth’s son Carl, Chrissy and Fred. The complexity of the relationships is illustrated by the story of Elizabeth’s conception. She was conceived because her mother had seen the child Adam speaking in tongues. It is the interworking these complicated relationships that is the basis of this novel. Fred beats and otherwise abuses Chrissy and yet has had a child and is till connected emotionally with Carl. Carl yearns to be near Chrissy and yet comes to accept that despite eh beatings Chrissy loves and wants to be with Fred. Carl and Chrissy’s daughter and Moira, a woman who is attracted to Carl’ are brought into this relationship along with the politician Luke Richardson who is a pollical rival to Fred. The we b of relationships and their interactions reach out to encompass Adam and McKelvey with the memory of Elizabeth killed in a car crash. Elizabeth married McKelvey but Carl, her son, was conceived as the result of her affair with Adam.

Cohen weaves all of these relationships through flashbacks from the point of view of multiple characters. This he does effectively and subtly. He leads the reader to insights into these characters implicitly and through nuance. This is not a story of black and white. These relationships come in many colours and many shades. There are no real heroes and no real villains. There are only real people who live in a real society that is as all real society’s do at all times is adapting to change that is upsetting some and exciting others. This links “Elizabeth and After” to the others of Cohen’s novels. I thinks him specifically to Eastern Ontario but it does not limit him to that. This is not a regional novel although to captures the essence of one region. Cohen was an accomplished novelist and “Elizabeth and After” is a novel well worth reading.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful novel centers around two families, the McKelveys and the Robinsons and takes place in the late seventies and eighties in West Gull, a small rural town on a lake in eastern Ontario just north of Kingston. Elizabeth is the wife of William McKelvey, a failed farmer who tended less to his farm and more to drinking hunting and fishing. William cannot hang on to his family home any longer. He is elderly, disoriented, angry, has a bad knee and his heart requires a valve job. He is now living in a retirement home and about to turn over the family farm to Luke Richardson, a real estate developer who has been trying to get his hands on it for years.

When readers first meet Carl McKelvey, William and Elizabeth’s son, he is driving back home from Vancouver Island where he has been worked for several years, trying to escape a difficult relationship with his father, a failed marriage and most of all the shame surrounding his mother’s death. A decade ago, Elizabeth was killed in a car accident early on New Year’s Day, when the car Carl was driving slammed into a tree, killing her instantly.

Chrissy, Carl’s ex-wife, has asked him to come home as their seven-year-old daughter Lizzie, is asking for him. Years ago, Chrissy threw Carl out of the house, unable to tolerate his temper and his drinking any longer. Soon after, her former boyfriend, Fred moved in. Carl is hoping to get back together with Chrissy, reconnect with his daughter and hopefully establish some kind of truce with his father. He is determined to be a good citizen and a responsible Dad to Lizzie, who he believes is the only person who loves him.

Although he has come home to start something new, he soon finds himself sinking into his past life. No matter what he does or how he has changed his life, his reputation for drinking, fighting and his volatile temper follow him and it seems he will always be known as the boy who drove his mother into a tree and killed her.

Elizabeth had been a schoolteacher and had positively affected the lives of people in the town. Among them was Adam Goldsmith, the town bachelor, a quiet man and an accountant who had loved Elizabeth since meeting her. But she was married, so for years he dated the daughter of the town’s doctor and many thought they would marry, but it never happened. Instead, Adam remained single and enjoyed every moment he spent with Elizabeth when they volunteered in the community.

The story in this character driven novel unfolds in flashbacks and shows how the lives of these principal characters intertwine over the years. Cohen lays out an intricately plotted story, eventually bringing his readers to an unexpected conclusion. The novel has all the elements that stories about families include: adultery, alcoholism, violent tempers, domestic abuse and accidental death. But it is also filled with love in all its forms: love between spouses, love between parents and their children, and the longing for lost love. It has a melancholy tone, but Cohen includes some very funny scenes, helping to lift the mood of the narrative and pulling it away from getting too dark. He has given readers an engaging plot, carefully crafted characters, describes the beauty of the small rural communities that dot eastern Ontario and what life is like there. It is all there, “the haves and the have-nots”, the family histories and gossip that is passed down from generation to generation, the long accepted locked-in corruption that is never addressed and the longstanding feuds that are never resolved.

The story reinforces the truth that little that happens in private spaces in a community is shared, and few ever know what really goes on behind closed doors.

Matt Cohen, a Canadian writer, died of lung cancer when he was fifty-two, just weeks after receiving the prestigious Governor General’s Award in 1999 for this excellent and engaging novel.

[Cathy Savage · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story about the lives of Elizabeth , her husband and son and how relationships become complex and messy. It interested me in from as it was set in eastern Canada. It soon became (to my mind) fairly soap opera-ish but I still felt I had to finish it. I tells of the interrelated relationships of those connected to Elizabeth both before and after her conception! It moves between Elizabeth's relationships with McKelvey and others in the beginning and that of her son Carl 30 years later. It easily portrays how life can become soap opera-ish! It speaks to attraction, loyalty, love and sacrifice and just how messy real life can get. It makes me want to read more by this author.

[Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has a slow unassuming start. Nothing spectacular, no real sense of plot, just a lot of characters in a small Ontario town. The people seem typical. Yet as the story unwinds, the intricacies of their woven lives becomes more than what first appeared. The back and forth (present and past) of the story is actually very artfully done so that you feel like you have been told everything but then you might learn a little more. There is no melodrama, nothing suspenseful, yet the plot builds as it weaves and unwinds. Nothing extraordinary but still very enjoyable.

[Mark Edlund · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fiction - my last book in my 2022 reading list (Canadian fiction for the 1990's) and there was no real need to read this book any sooner. Too much drinking, too much smoking, characters blurring into each other and way too much angst. Some redeeming characters are in this book but they are hard to find.
No pharmacy references.
Canadian references - set in the mythical community of Gull Lake which appears to be near Kingston.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved how the book was driven by characters experiences rather than plot. The story wasn't what was compelling about this book but rather how it sucked you in to the emotions, dreams and world of the many POV character's day to day lives and how they all wove together. an enjoyable read.

[Kate McDougall Sackler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although it took me awhile to really get into this book, I ended up liking it. This novel centers on a woman in a small Canadian town and the people integral to her story.
Alphabet challenge 2020-C:Cohen

[Mindy Gough · Rating 3 out of 5]

A story well told.

[Sarah O'Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Difficult to keep track of all the characters.

[Alison Vardy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found it very hard to follow characters and timeline and about halfway stopped reading

[Arlidgeg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Challenging. Wanted to like it much more than I did. Suspect I was not in right mindset. May retry at some point.

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the way he set the contexts for the complications and struggles the characters faced. Each character was nuanced and demonstrated growth, for better or worse.

[Alison Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hooked by the incredibly funny opening vignette but kept by the character's small lives of quiet desperation. It's a beautifully drawn character study. 3.5

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't say I loved it. But I've read it and now it is done. There were missing bits, I felt. How did it win? It ENDS in italics as it began, but she is now dead, although not yet here.
"When she had the cup in her hands, steaming and aromatic, a candle lit to keep her company, she stood at the window looking out at the barn. She saw the yellow flame reflected in the mirror of the glass, the blurred image of her own face, the night-black dawn sloping down to the driveway where her car's chrome gleamed in the moonlight."

Ah, does the video reveal that this story is the real Beauty and the Beast, the real consensual sensual bdsm? Is this the Jian Ghomeshi story written as a GG winner? Wow. Idealized Madonna and whore. Is this what men do when they write about women?

The ordinary and extraordinary intermingles. Nothing happens, and surprising (but maybe not expected, or therefore really real) events take place. Maybe this is the stuff of life, of novels, of experience, of creativity. And there's echoes.. he echoes the quote later. Interesting....

So, here is where I finally understand why this won the Governor General's Award:
"Mysteries begin with the body but sometimes the mystery is not death but love. There is so much to love. Cats. Bits of dust caught in the light. Colours. Unexpected waterfalls. And of course: the body. Warm skin on cool sheets. The blood's night hum. Summer heat seeping through damp moss. The raw smell of an oak tree opened in winter. A long-missed voice over the telephone. So much to love that life should be made out of loving, so many ways of loving that all stories should be love stories. This one about a man and a woman. Adam and Elizabeth. They're on a library committee and on their way to buy cut-rate cookies for a fundraising tea. It's the winter after she told him about Carl."

Thus it BEGINS.
"The West Gull Cemetary announces itself with a twenty-foot-high stone archway of quarried limestone. Its gates are black wrought iron with silver tips and fittings, and the matching fence stretches hundreds of yards along the highway. Located on a high and windswept plateau, it offers a unique and flattering perspective on Long Gull Lake, the town of West Gull itself and the rich surrounding farmland. Even a stranger would be impressed.
Once Elizabeth McKelvey was such a stranger. On a certain spring day that marked the end of a long winter, both real and metaphorical, she passed through the archway, drifted a palm along the silky-slick surface of the limestone, stepped gingerly onto the moist dense grass. The sky was blue, the light of a sparkle of sun and budding leaves. Soon she could hardly see the car in which she had arrived, and the man who brought her had receded to a shadow. As she lost herself in this new world, the idea that she might one day be buried there seemed almost natural.
But when that time actually arrived the word everyone used was not 'natural' but 'unexpected.' Unexpected. Like the woman herself, like the accident that killed her.."

[Holly Hollyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book, although it took me quite a long time to read it. I felt that some of the characters were underdeveloped and that made it confusing at times, I frequently had to go back to re read sections. I loved that it was set in Ontario - I could imagine the little town very easily! About half way through the book, it became much easier to read and I made better progress from that point.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little slow paced but very interesting. An interesting look at small town life where everyone has a secret and nobody really knows the truth about everyone except for the reader as this tale is told. There was so much sadness and heartbreak but it was hard to feel bad for the characters because of the choices they made. I definitely wasn't expecting that ending but maybe I should have since it ended almost how it began.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

which path to take? - what will be gained? what will be lost?
we choose a path - never knowing where the others would have led -
-would the gain have been greater than the loss???

a multitude of choices ...
what we chose to do - what we chose to say all having an impact
- large or seemingly inconsequential -

but one life - one path ....