The Boys: Or, Waiting for the Electrician's Daughter

by John Terpstra

“I would not have wanted not to know you exactly as you were. I would not like to lose even a moment of your slow decline.”

From acclaimed author John Terpstra comes the story of his wife’s family and the short lives of her three brothers, each of whom lived with muscular dystrophy until their early twenties. With humour, reverence and great love, Terpstra charts the experience of a family under unusual, but resoundingly human, circumstances. He recreates the daily life, the vitality and wit shared by the three boys, and his relationships with them as they entered the final stages of their illness. Above all, he underlines the privilege of spending time with each of them – Neil, Paul and Eric – coming to know their persistence as individuals, their collective brand of humour and the force field of their personalities in unison.

Terpstra recounts the habits, the gentle rituals and oddities of living in the boys’ realm: their shared passion for sports, their penchant for nicknames, their records and correspondence, and the steady flow of friends, family and caregivers who participated in their lives. Many times along the way, convictions are checked, challenged and rechecked, faith upended and restored, and perceptions of illness, disability and quality of life vigorously shaken.

The Boys honours the last year in the lives of three brothers whose days could never rightly be called wasted or tragic, but whose time on earth was all too brief. Terpstra celebrates life and challenges the brackets we place around lives characterized by illness. He centres the mechanics of the boys’ physical presence within the geography of their home and community. The Boys is also a gradual examination of storytelling, of the ownership of stories, of where stories effectively begin and whether they ever end.

“I have made a heap of all that I could find…” says Terpstra, “the stuff kept in trunks and boxes; loose photos and albums, a diary, keepsakes, the written notes. What remained, materially, of their lives. Can art be made from terminal disease? After all these years the narrative of their lives had distilled into key moments and events, I would like to say, but it was really in the putting-together and spelling out in words of insignificant and mundane moments and events that their various lights began to shine. I was also thinking about St. Augustine, and the brief, numbered chapters of his Confessions. I thought, at first, that each of the chapters should be addressed directly to God, as they are in that book, because then the big why of the family’s story could stay front and centre the whole time. It seemed appropriate. Except that the big why never dominated the story as it originally unfolded, and was not doing so as the story unfolded before me. Scrap St. Augustine. With their lives these brothers who had no future raised life high; in their daily routines, routine itself became holy. Can art be made from terminal disease? I took my cue from them.”

This book is a smyth-sewn paperback bound in card stock with a letterpress-printed jacket. The text was typeset by Andrew Steeves in Fred Smeijer’s Quadraat and Quadraat Sans, and printed offset on laid paper.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Canada

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2005

About the author

John Terpstra, poet, author, cabinetmaker (born at Brockville, ON). A child of parents who emigrated to Canada from the Netherlands, John Terpstra attended school in Edmonton, Alberta and Hamilton, Ontario, where he still resides. After a stint at Trinity Christian College in Chicago, Illinois, he graduated from the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. Instead of pursuing academic life, Terpstra chose to earn his living as a cabinetmaker while maintaining a writing career.

Terpstra's work has received wide recognition. He was the winner of the F. G. BRESSANI Literary Prize for POETRY in 1988, for the collection Forty Days And Forty Nights (1987). In 1992, he won the CBC Radio Literary Competition for Captain Kintail (1992), and his 2003 volume Disarmament was shortlisted for a GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD. Among his other books of poetry are The Church Not Made With Hands (1997), The Devil's Punchbowl (1998) and Two Or Three Guitars: Selected Poems (2006). Terpstra has also collaborated on a spoken word and music CD, Nod Me In, Shake Me Out (2000), with pianist and composer Bart Nameth. His work has been anthologized in New Canadian Poetry (2000) and Poetry And Spiritual Practice: Selections From Contemporary Canadian Poets (2002). Terpstra has served as Writer-In-Residence at MCMASTER UNIVERSITY and as Visiting Artist at St. Augustine College in Ottawa, holding both appointments in 2005.
John Terpstra is also noted for his prose works Falling Into Place (2002) and The Boys, Or Waiting For The Electrician's Daughter (2005), for which he was a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize and the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Falling Into Place considers the Iroquois Bar, the glacial sandbar on which the city of Hamilton rests, and which supports one of Canada's busiest transportation corridors.

Terpstra affirms his identification with this aspect of his hometown: "we're made of this stuff; this earth, this shale, this mud and suffering clay." The Boys is an elegy for Terpstra's wife's three brothers, all of whom died of MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY within a six month period in 1978. While describing their personal conditions and the cultural conceptions regarding DISABILITY, Terpstra celebrates their spirits by bringing into focus the brothers' imaginations and their vivid, outgoing personalities.

Terpstra's poetic voice is quiet but forceful; at times he is bemused, as in the poem "The Loo:" "I read somewhere that this/part of the country was first/settled because of one." Elsewhere his tone is wistful, as in "Giants:" "I'm telling you they absolutely loved/every minute living here/and they regretted ever having to leave." But he is always calm and magnanimous in the face of life's open mysteries, as in "A Prayer To Be In Paradise With The Children:" "When I must come to you o my God.../ I beg the lively company to keep/of kids, in Paradise, where rest and rising meet." Again we see this tone in "The Little Towns of Bethlehem:" "this night/ is born a child, this night/ bearing each,/ and the places of their birth/ and nativity is given/ every name."

Terpstra's poems are ingrained with a strong CHRISTIAN ethos, but his tone is not didactic. Rather, it suggests a pure spiritual apprehension of life infused with holiness - love, compassion, respect for others, and an acceptance of the sufferings we all undergo in our daily experiences. Terpstra's mastery of his media holds his artistic vision together and allows him to go from form to form; given the uniformity of his thematic focus, it may be all one to him. Ultimately, what distinguishes Terpstra's work is his reverence for life, and this is what makes it distinctive and wise.

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw and beautiful--a very reflective and artistic account on what it means to take joy in suffering, while neither denying the degrading extent of that suffering.

[Father Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up out of the Eighth Day Books catalog after being captivated by a quote from it. Part of that quotation is in the book info above, and it gave me the impression that this book was much more exquisitely composed than it in fact was. Unfortunately, it sapped that phrase of its power within the context of the story, and robbed the book of what may very well have been its climax.

Arranged as a series of short, almost aphoristic reminisces about the three brothers of the author's wife, each of whom was afflicted with muscular dystrophy from a very young age, the total effect is more of a photo album than a narrative from beginning to end. However, I am not convinced that the means the author chose were not the best way to evoke a subject that is an emotional and poetic re-presentation of the remarkable personalities of these boys. There is some good poetry sprinkled throughout, poetry that achieves its purpose much more effectively for being situated solidly in the context in which it was created--which is really a way to appreciate poetry I had not experienced before, and provided some insight to the creative process. The net effect of the compositional style, though, is that the author is a heavily mediating figure, giving his audience not so much a look at the boys through his eyes but a look at the effect their lives have had upon him. By the end of the book, I knew Terpstra better than I knew Neil, Paul, and Eric.

That being said, this seems consonant with his overall purpose. The power of these apparently crippled lives lay, as he notes, in their attractiveness despite a deprivation of what is regarded as what is most fundamentally desirable. We encounter a man who has been transformed by an encounter. He very effectively evokes the feelings and reactions of one who steps into an unconventional home and learns what it means to be a member of a family that revolves completely around the care of three disabled teenagers. His unique position of being both within and without the family permits him to straddle two worlds in which a disease is either a fact of life or a shameful tragedy. What results is a loving cultivation of an awareness of dignity in the shadow of humiliation and weakness.

[Lindsey Sieders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book. Written in more of a prose/poetry style John Terpstra captures the beauty and the challenges of his three brother-in-law's, all who were diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. Terpstra captures the beauty of life, regardless of one's physical ability.

[Campbell Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am grateful for the glimpse of the lives of this family.

I too believe in the resurrection of the body and that I will meet them as wholly themselves.

The value of these lives should not ever be in question; the ability of a community to support and love their own in need, even imperfectly, is almost unimaginable to me among us now. How pitiful my faith.

It is a shame this tender, searing volume is out of print.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up in a desire to read more local authors. This book was the perfect afternoon Sabbath read. I finished it in one sitting at the public library and found myself completely immersed in the story line. Terpstra's poetry-prose gave vitality and strength to the ethos of the story line, and I finished it feeling like I knew personally the family he was telling about.

[Neila Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartfelt. Insightful. Sensitive. Humorous. Perceptive.

[Bernadette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was moving, heart-wrenching, and beautiful. It not only gave a glimpse into the life of those who suffer from disabilities like muscular dystrophy, but it also showed the strength and joy required by those who care for them. The amount of love and life that Paul, Eric, and Neil had was incredible. The reiteration that John makes throughout the book that their life wasn't any less full than those who didn't have the disease was extremely powerful and it was well made and delivered throughout the novel. This really was a touching book.

[Warhammer Grantham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, is sort of written half-poetry, half-prose. A young man marries a woman whose three younger brothers are all diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy from a young age. This book is about his wife's brothers, how they lived and the people around them. The prose is weird sometimes, but it's worth a read.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

satisfyingly beautiful. i bought this book at a time in my life when book buying was a luxury, and i was not disappointed -- with either the painful, lovely story or the exquisite binding, cover art, and paper. i also love that john terpstra is a poet who moonlights as a cabinetmaker. very cool.

[Jeff Tigchelaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

so, so good. heartwrenching.

[Jennifer Davy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult book to read, I don't think I like this style of writing. The subject was disturbing and you could feel for many of the characters, but my heart went out to the mother.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book about a strong, beautiful family. The writing style is a little different, possibly due to the author being a poet. The poetry included makes for an interesting touch, as well.

[Jane Mulkewich · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book.