Doing the Heart Good

by Neil Bissoondath

The burning down of his house propels Alistair, now living with his daughter, her husband and child, to reflect on the causes and effects of how momentary impulses change the course of direction, how unexpected horrors still haunt him, how friendship can be nurtured as well as starved, how love sustains, how hatred destroys and how, in a ramshackle way, it all makes a peculiar, and rather moving, sort of sense. This is a writer at the very apex of his art, understated, calm, totally in control of his craft.

Genres: Fiction

328 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

About the author

Neil Devindra Bissoondath, novelist, short-story writer, essayist (b at Arima, Trinidad and Tobago 19 Apr 1955). He attended St Mary's College in Port of Spain before emigrating to Canada in 1973, when he became a student at York University (BA 1977). After graduating, he began teaching English as a second language and French in Toronto. Bissoondath began writing short stories in the late seventies, and attended the Banff School of Fine Arts in 1983. He credits his uncle, author V.S. Naipaul, for providing inspiration. Bissoondath's first book, a collection of short stories called Digging Up the Mountains (1985), deals with feelings of cultural alienation, exile and domestic upheaval - themes he has continued to explore in his other writings. The book was a commercial and critical success, enabling Bissoondath to leave teaching for a number of years and devote himself to writing full-time. In 1995 he relocated to Québec City, where he teaches Creative Writing at Université Laval.
Bissoondath published a second collection of short stories, On the Eve of Uncertain Tomorrows, in 1990. Most of his fiction has taken the form of novels, beginning with A Casual Brutality (1988), set in the fictional Caribbean republic of Casaquemada. The Innocence of Age (1993) is the story of intergenerational tensions in an increasingly racist Toronto. Bissoondath's novels often focus on characters confronting their respective pasts. The protagonist in GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD nominee The Worlds Within Her (1998) returns to her Caribbean birthplace in order to deliver her mother's ashes. In Doing the Heart Good (2002), an elderly anglophone Montrealer reevaluates his life after losing his possessions to an arsonist. The Unyielding Clamour of the Night (2005) deals with a young schoolteacher who leaves a privileged upbringing to encounter political, religious, and racial unrest in a fictional island state modelled on Sri Lanka.
Bissoondath's most controversial and best-selling book is Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (1994, rev. 2002). In this nonfiction work, Bissoondath criticizes the 1971 MULTICULTURALISM Act for emphasizing differences rather than similarities amongst the country's various ethnic groups. He argues that the country's multicultural policies, though well-intentioned, have only encouraged the isolation and stereotyping of cultural groups.

Reviews

[Mary Soderstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I'd read this book when it came out, but, preparing to talk about it for one of the library book groups I lead, I find that I must have read no more than the first chapter or so. At the time, I think, I must have been put off by the stuffy, anti-Québecois Anglo-centrism of Alistair McKenzie, the narrator. What I didn't realize that this is a novel where the main character actually grows considerably even though he considers himself at the end of his life. The man at the beginning is not the man at the novel's close.

My big quibble at this point is the somewhat arbitrary way the episodes are put together, almost as if Bissoondath had a handful of short stories and decided to make a novel of them without really knowing how to weave them into a whole. He almost does, but I wonder if series of linked short stories would have worked better.

Definitely worth reading, though.

[Charles Cormier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un très beau livre. Touchant, troublant et drôle.

[The Final Chapter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Low 5. This reader cannot but appeal to other readers to discover this work and this author. Having lost his home to arson, an aged widower, conscious of his own impending and irreversible slide into dementia, is determined to save for posterity one of the scant valuable hand-me-downs to escape the flames - namely the memories of his late wife and those moments of his life which he treasures. The novel is structured along random recollections, but that is what makes it so believable. The prose is poignant and insightful revealing a truly gifted writer. The memorable events and characters include a tragic case of presumed guilt and injustice, and a Latino dwarf with the charisma of a giant, while the central memories of a loving couple advancing in years is so moving. A treat.

[Kaharrall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neil Bissoondath thinks his way inside the body of an elderly retired university professor. He has a few physical challenges as a result of seeing action in WWII: he is partially deaf and lame enough to need a cane. This and his Scottish- Canadian background make him appear to be not very sensitive to those around him. He is deeply sensitive, though, and over the course of the week running up to Christmas, in his seventy-fifth year, he thinks back about many significant people in his life. And he is so fond of them. And has never told them so.