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Celia's Song
Mink is a witness, a shape shifter, compelled to follow the story that has ensnared Celia and her village, on the West coast of Vancouver Island in territory. Celia is a seer who - despite being convinced she's a little "off" - must heal her village with the assistance of her sister, her mother and father, and her nephews. While mink is visiting, a double-headed sea serpent falls off the house front during a fierce storm. The old snake, ostracized from the village decades earlier, has left his terrible influence on Amos, a residential school survivor. The occurrence signals the unfolding of an ordeal that pulls Celia out of her reveries and into the tragedy of her cousin's granddaughter. Each one of Celia's family becomes involved in creating a greater solution than merely attending to her cousin's granddaughter. Celia's Song relates one family's harrowing experiences over several generations, after the brutality, interference, and neglect resulting from contact with Europeans.
280 pages, Paperback
First published September 29, 2014
37 people are currently reading
2005 people want to read
About the author
Lee Maracle
33 books281 followersBorn in Vancouver, British Columbia, she grew up in the neighbouring city of North Vancouver and attended Simon Fraser University. She was one of the first Aboriginal people to be published in the early 1970s.
Maracle is one of the most prolific aboriginal authors in Canada and a recognized authority on issues pertaining to aboriginal people and aboriginal literature. She is an award-winning poet, novelist, performance storyteller, scriptwriter, actor and keeper/mythmaker among the Stó:lō people.
Maracle was one of the founders of the En’owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, British Columbia and the cultural director of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto, Ontario.
Maracle has given hundreds of speeches on political, historical, and feminist sociological topics related to native people, and conducted dozens of workshops on personal and cultural reclamation. She has served as a consultant on First Nations’ self-government and has an extensive history
in community development. She has been described as “a walking history book” and an international expert on Canadian First Nations culture and history.
Maracle has taught at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Southern Oregon University and has served as professor of Canadian culture at Western Washington University. She currently lives in Toronto, teaching at the University of Toronto First Nations House. She most recently was the writer-in-residence at the University of Guelph.
Maracle is one of the most prolific aboriginal authors in Canada and a recognized authority on issues pertaining to aboriginal people and aboriginal literature. She is an award-winning poet, novelist, performance storyteller, scriptwriter, actor and keeper/mythmaker among the Stó:lō people.
Maracle was one of the founders of the En’owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, British Columbia and the cultural director of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto, Ontario.
Maracle has given hundreds of speeches on political, historical, and feminist sociological topics related to native people, and conducted dozens of workshops on personal and cultural reclamation. She has served as a consultant on First Nations’ self-government and has an extensive history
in community development. She has been described as “a walking history book” and an international expert on Canadian First Nations culture and history.
Maracle has taught at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Southern Oregon University and has served as professor of Canadian culture at Western Washington University. She currently lives in Toronto, teaching at the University of Toronto First Nations House. She most recently was the writer-in-residence at the University of Guelph.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
February 3, 2015
This is in some ways a complicated book. There is a lovely back and forth flow between an animal spirit whose job is to witness, and the human participants in the story. I loved the way the spiritual world is shown to influence 'real life'. I loved the emphasis on the power and ability of women. I learned so much from reading this.
There is a truly horrible scene in the middle of the novel that shocked me with its brutality and unexpectedness, as an event of that type should. I think it really furthered some of the points of the story, but I still wish something less awful could have been used.
Through large parts of the story I felt very connected to the women, and felt my own self understood in a way that seldom happens, but by the end I felt very white, and like I have a mountain of things yet to learn about white privilege and that I've only just begun to tap into what we have done to our first nations.
There is a truly horrible scene in the middle of the novel that shocked me with its brutality and unexpectedness, as an event of that type should. I think it really furthered some of the points of the story, but I still wish something less awful could have been used.
Through large parts of the story I felt very connected to the women, and felt my own self understood in a way that seldom happens, but by the end I felt very white, and like I have a mountain of things yet to learn about white privilege and that I've only just begun to tap into what we have done to our first nations.
November 14, 2021
This beautifully written book, if you are able to let go of your own conceptions of reality, will show you that there is more than one way to know the world.
The characters in this novel inhabit a landscape where past, present and future, and physical and spiritual realms exist simultaneously. It is historical in scope; from the beginnings of time for this group of indigenous people, through to the disasters of first contact with white people and on to residential schools, and the fallout in the present from all that. A two headed snake is out to devour the people. Mink, the transforming witness, views the world from a first person perspective while the rest of the story is told in 3rd person. Celia is a seer and it is primarily through her eyes, those of Mink’s, and eventually, Celia's nephew Jacob, that these other ways of understanding the world are revealed.
It’s a matrilineal world. Celia, her mother, and sisters become empowered as they learn who they are and accept themselves. At first, Steve, the white doctor who is involved with one of these women, doesn’t grasp their power or intelligence. The sad truth is revealed in one of the male character’s reflections on white men, “What Ned thinks is even scarier is that they don’t think their own women are very smart on the other side of the bridge, and so they cannot imagine the women in this village being smart either.”
At one point the family talk about how the vote silenced and destroyed them. Voting destroyed a cultural model for decision-making that had worked to build consensus. When there was an issue, conversations would take place between all the different members of the community. By the time a meeting was held, each family sent a representative, and everyone already knew what they would do and what each person’s role would be.
This is a book about catastrophic loss, healing, justice and survival. Something terrible happens in the middle of this book, but this action of evil becomes a catalyst for deep change that is predicated on indigenous knowing of the world.
After I read this book I read reviews on Goodreads. Many people mentioned that this book made them aware of their own whiteness. This is a good thing.
The characters in this novel inhabit a landscape where past, present and future, and physical and spiritual realms exist simultaneously. It is historical in scope; from the beginnings of time for this group of indigenous people, through to the disasters of first contact with white people and on to residential schools, and the fallout in the present from all that. A two headed snake is out to devour the people. Mink, the transforming witness, views the world from a first person perspective while the rest of the story is told in 3rd person. Celia is a seer and it is primarily through her eyes, those of Mink’s, and eventually, Celia's nephew Jacob, that these other ways of understanding the world are revealed.
It’s a matrilineal world. Celia, her mother, and sisters become empowered as they learn who they are and accept themselves. At first, Steve, the white doctor who is involved with one of these women, doesn’t grasp their power or intelligence. The sad truth is revealed in one of the male character’s reflections on white men, “What Ned thinks is even scarier is that they don’t think their own women are very smart on the other side of the bridge, and so they cannot imagine the women in this village being smart either.”
At one point the family talk about how the vote silenced and destroyed them. Voting destroyed a cultural model for decision-making that had worked to build consensus. When there was an issue, conversations would take place between all the different members of the community. By the time a meeting was held, each family sent a representative, and everyone already knew what they would do and what each person’s role would be.
This is a book about catastrophic loss, healing, justice and survival. Something terrible happens in the middle of this book, but this action of evil becomes a catalyst for deep change that is predicated on indigenous knowing of the world.
After I read this book I read reviews on Goodreads. Many people mentioned that this book made them aware of their own whiteness. This is a good thing.
September 5, 2024
A tale you must work at, but it is worth the labor involved. Allegorical, cross-cultural, forensic historical skills needed, or a willingness to join free-floating ride on the lyrical beat of the stories intertwined. It has dark shadows, and terrorific happenings - this isn't a beach read. Unless, I would say, you are at or near those very beaches and could feel it all about you. . .basically this is a song that laments all the way through.
Hard truths, gather into a difficult read, and on top of it all, arrows of epiphanies heart-aimed - my favorite and the one I cannot stop thinking about:
You are never free if you have only one choice. That's what oppression is built on. That one single choice, no matter how persuasively the convincement is drawn, remember Celia says: It is a lie.
I listened to this book, and was leaning toward 5 stars afterward; until I pulled up a written copy, where I could more clearly see and properly assign the asides of Mink, of the Serpent, of the indigenous commentary on the [white] reality that was being unfolded. Until that was laid out for me in stark contrast, my mind was busy reinterpreting the author's work. (Alarming thought: how often is that happening???!?) I am now re-reading the book, slowly, and charting characters and events, and googling as questions arise.
All the stars. Go Lee Maracle! Keep dancing, keep singing, keep the spirits happy and show the hope there may come a day when all is back in balance (understood that difficult choices and happenings will require such a reconciliation of Turtle Island).
*A sincere thank you to Lee Maracle, ECW Press Audio, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.* #CeliasSong #NetGalley 52:46
Hard truths, gather into a difficult read, and on top of it all, arrows of epiphanies heart-aimed - my favorite and the one I cannot stop thinking about:
You are never free if you have only one choice. That's what oppression is built on. That one single choice, no matter how persuasively the convincement is drawn, remember Celia says: It is a lie.
I listened to this book, and was leaning toward 5 stars afterward; until I pulled up a written copy, where I could more clearly see and properly assign the asides of Mink, of the Serpent, of the indigenous commentary on the [white] reality that was being unfolded. Until that was laid out for me in stark contrast, my mind was busy reinterpreting the author's work. (Alarming thought: how often is that happening???!?) I am now re-reading the book, slowly, and charting characters and events, and googling as questions arise.
All the stars. Go Lee Maracle! Keep dancing, keep singing, keep the spirits happy and show the hope there may come a day when all is back in balance (understood that difficult choices and happenings will require such a reconciliation of Turtle Island).
*A sincere thank you to Lee Maracle, ECW Press Audio, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.* #CeliasSong #NetGalley 52:46
March 8, 2019
This book, about so much, but for me about how the poison of colonialism, and the erasure of Indigenous People’s knowledge and songs and medicine and ways of being (and the literal genocidal erasure of Indigenous people through disease and displacement and war and patriarchal violence and child removal) creates a harm so deep it is built on centuries of ancestral trauma, is also a book of family love and healing and the way back home in a world forever changed. How’s that for the run-on sentence of a lifetime? Like some of the characters in this book, my feelings about the english language are that I don’t owe it shit. This book enriched me. It taught me that the old agreements between the spirit world and the natural world that we separate ourselves from can explain so much of the brokenness and crises of today. It spoke of how ancestral knowledge will find the dispossessed even if we can’t find it in our living Elders. And it reminded me that resistance is just being in our way, and that our way lives in our blood - it cannot be stolen. This book tells trauma tales in profoundly graphic ways that mark the spirit. This book tells healing tales that comfort a soul in grief and fear about our frightening world out of balance. This book sings honour to Indigenous women and reminds us that it is our job to listen to them and be guided by their knowledge. This novel, like all of Maracle’s work, is sorely under-appreciated, and therefore I am going to revisit Maracle’s entire catalogue of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and I’d encourage you to walk that path with me.
December 24, 2016
Can you care too much for small things? p67
This is an imaginative, profound tale, that requires imagination and some effort to get into.
It may seem like a small book, but it contains worlds.
You don't need to know why anything happens. You only need know what to do is all. p 169
We are not lost. We are traveling in the wrong direction. p213
April 12, 2024
As someone who studied the harrowing effects of colonialism on communities around the world, I had to request this audiobook arc. And even though this book was published in 2014, I had never heard of it.
But I'm so glad I listened to the audiobook! The fact that the audiobook narrator, Columpa Bobb, is the author's daughter puts the icing on the cake. Her narration really set the story's mood.
Celia's Song is one of those novels written in a way that feels like it's a tale told throughout generations and with more information/stories added on with each subsequent generation. It's literary fiction told through the lens of magical realism. There's a dreamlike quality at times, but the nightmare of overt and covert colonial practices shatters that dream pretty quickly.
Some of it is metaphorical (especially with the two-headed snake), and it took a while to click in my head. But when I finally understood what it all meant, I realized this was less dreamlike and more nightmarish.
Overall, I'd recommend this if you're a fan of literary fiction mixed with magical realism, especially if you're looking for Indigenous voices.
Thank you to ECW Press Audio and NetGalley for this arc.
But I'm so glad I listened to the audiobook! The fact that the audiobook narrator, Columpa Bobb, is the author's daughter puts the icing on the cake. Her narration really set the story's mood.
Celia's Song is one of those novels written in a way that feels like it's a tale told throughout generations and with more information/stories added on with each subsequent generation. It's literary fiction told through the lens of magical realism. There's a dreamlike quality at times, but the nightmare of overt and covert colonial practices shatters that dream pretty quickly.
Some of it is metaphorical (especially with the two-headed snake), and it took a while to click in my head. But when I finally understood what it all meant, I realized this was less dreamlike and more nightmarish.
Overall, I'd recommend this if you're a fan of literary fiction mixed with magical realism, especially if you're looking for Indigenous voices.
Thank you to ECW Press Audio and NetGalley for this arc.
December 30, 2023
By far the best book I have read this year.
”It is about finding your own song, the song that will move you through life. We are not lost. We are travelling in the wrong direction. Song moves us toward our humanity and right now we are moving away from it.”
”It is about finding your own song, the song that will move you through life. We are not lost. We are travelling in the wrong direction. Song moves us toward our humanity and right now we are moving away from it.”
March 28, 2019
Not sure about the rating yet, I need to sit on it for a while and ponder to what degree I liked/disliked certain aspects of the novel...
RTC.
RTC.
October 13, 2014
This was a beautifully crafted book from start to finish and deserving of 4.5 stars. The characters are rich and the story is compelling. Maracle expertly weaves together multiple her-stories across generations and demonstrates the living scars of colonial struggle. Worth a read and re-read in order to fully glean the richness of Maracle's writing.
August 22, 2019
A remarkable follow up to Ravensong, featuring two-headed sea serpents and family drama.
February 14, 2022
Such an absorbing book, and a unique reading experience. It starts out somewhat disorienting with narration by a mink interspersed with visions of an ancient two headed snake that needs to be appeased and along with snippets of a 40ish Sto:lo woman named Celia. I hadn't realized that this book was a sequel of sorts to Maracle's Ravensong which features Celia as a younger woman - I haven't it read yet but definitely will!
After this somewhat disorienting start, either I was able to settle into its shifting narrative points of view, or the book became a bit more linear or possibly both. In any case, I very much appreciated being exposed to the Sto:lo point(s) of view, and the history of this family and their village. The novel shows a family dealing with generational trauma and with strings of tragedy, and figuring out what traditions can guide them, and to what extent they want to be part of the white world "across the bridge". I think this might be a book I'd want to read again.
After this somewhat disorienting start, either I was able to settle into its shifting narrative points of view, or the book became a bit more linear or possibly both. In any case, I very much appreciated being exposed to the Sto:lo point(s) of view, and the history of this family and their village. The novel shows a family dealing with generational trauma and with strings of tragedy, and figuring out what traditions can guide them, and to what extent they want to be part of the white world "across the bridge". I think this might be a book I'd want to read again.
Read
February 6, 2021I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time. The prose is gorgeous, and the story is moving, but that isn't quite the point of the book. It's almost more of a manifesto-in-story, about the healing power of culture, about worldview, and about justice. Many of the ideas are ones I've never considered before, and I don't quite know how I feel about them, or really what to make of them, but I'm excited to learn more.
March 11, 2021
A mystical story of a shape shifting mink, a seer and a two headed serpent which seek the righting of past wrongs intertwined with the history of a loving family and a romance. Two suggestions to readers: keep a list of names and the relationships among the characters as the family is large and several names are repeated from one generation to the next and.... steel yourself for some gut wrenching violence.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 5, 2024
Lynne C. Martin’s 2015 review says it all better than I can.
A tremendous, captivating, nuanced, dark novel. Maracle is exploring what it means for this Sto:lo family to be just that – a Sto:lo family finding their way and their songs again. Maracle locates significant healing power, and charts a path forward, from song. She explores the resilience and hardships that come with facing loss and violence (epidemics, colonialism), and ultimately offers a vision of hope and a case for working through things with steadfast vulnerability.
I found Maracle’s exploration of white/Indigenous relationships interesting and enriching and in different cases both loving and devastating. A microcosm of the book: it wades into the full spectrum of life’s experiences for these characters, with an appropriately diverse set of responses to colonial circumstances. An achievement in the nuance Lee Maracle is already well known for.
A tremendous, captivating, nuanced, dark novel. Maracle is exploring what it means for this Sto:lo family to be just that – a Sto:lo family finding their way and their songs again. Maracle locates significant healing power, and charts a path forward, from song. She explores the resilience and hardships that come with facing loss and violence (epidemics, colonialism), and ultimately offers a vision of hope and a case for working through things with steadfast vulnerability.
I found Maracle’s exploration of white/Indigenous relationships interesting and enriching and in different cases both loving and devastating. A microcosm of the book: it wades into the full spectrum of life’s experiences for these characters, with an appropriately diverse set of responses to colonial circumstances. An achievement in the nuance Lee Maracle is already well known for.
January 1, 2025
Holy moly.
This book brings to mind Katharena Vermette’s Strangers and Eden Robinson’s Trickster. It holds its own place — deeply sad, with path through.
This book brings to mind Katharena Vermette’s Strangers and Eden Robinson’s Trickster. It holds its own place — deeply sad, with path through.
March 15, 2017
What a compelling story. I read another review that mentioned how 'white' they felt by the time they read the end and I have to agree. This is a whole other culture that I've ignored for years, even though it's in my own backyard, so to speak. I've only recently started to take any notice of the terrible consequences colonialism and religion has had on this community. It often amazes me what they've survived as a people and I'm impressed with their resilience and forgiveness.
This book relates some of that history and some of those consequences, often in a poignant way and more often in a terrible way. This story is heart breaking and hopeful, beautiful despite the terrible tragedy it contains.
This book relates some of that history and some of those consequences, often in a poignant way and more often in a terrible way. This story is heart breaking and hopeful, beautiful despite the terrible tragedy it contains.
April 15, 2025
I need to digest for a month minimum before I say anything.
December 6, 2017
Reads like Margaret Atwood. I don't much like Margaret Atwood.
This feels... incoherent. Draft-like. And not in the sense that, say, Daphne Marlatt's Ana Historic (which has a similar tone and attention to perspective and locality) feels fragmentary and draft-like, or like Herman Melville's own "nay but a draught of a draught" Moby-Dick feels fragmentary and draft-like, or even some Atwood, this feels unedited. And not in a "raw" or "visceral" kind of way, not like an early Minor Threat live-recording kind of way, or Coil's Ambulance... kind of way, or like the fragments of Byron, or the poetry of Walt Whitman, or, or, or, or. The problem with Celia's Song is that it's very self-assured in the kind of way that any criticism I might levy at it can easily be met by a claim that Maracle "meant" to do that. Whether or not Maracle "meant" to do anything is not the issue. I have considered it. It didn't work for me. Two stars is the most I can muster for what was still some pretty striking imagery and some terrific passages, but the dialogue is so painfully awful (see: my reading updates), the pacing felt somehow both haphazard and forced.
I wonder how much of this is because I so much want a competent work that deals with indigenous issues, myself being one (that is, "indigenous," though I'm also partial to being considered an "issue"), and perhaps part of why I have spent so long avoiding reading indigenous fiction, and why I've taken so criminally long at the task of getting around to Richard Wagamese. But I mean, I waited on Joseph Boyden, and look what happened to him, so maybe procrastination is a virtue.
This feels... incoherent. Draft-like. And not in the sense that, say, Daphne Marlatt's Ana Historic (which has a similar tone and attention to perspective and locality) feels fragmentary and draft-like, or like Herman Melville's own "nay but a draught of a draught" Moby-Dick feels fragmentary and draft-like, or even some Atwood, this feels unedited. And not in a "raw" or "visceral" kind of way, not like an early Minor Threat live-recording kind of way, or Coil's Ambulance... kind of way, or like the fragments of Byron, or the poetry of Walt Whitman, or, or, or, or. The problem with Celia's Song is that it's very self-assured in the kind of way that any criticism I might levy at it can easily be met by a claim that Maracle "meant" to do that. Whether or not Maracle "meant" to do anything is not the issue. I have considered it. It didn't work for me. Two stars is the most I can muster for what was still some pretty striking imagery and some terrific passages, but the dialogue is so painfully awful (see: my reading updates), the pacing felt somehow both haphazard and forced.
I wonder how much of this is because I so much want a competent work that deals with indigenous issues, myself being one (that is, "indigenous," though I'm also partial to being considered an "issue"), and perhaps part of why I have spent so long avoiding reading indigenous fiction, and why I've taken so criminally long at the task of getting around to Richard Wagamese. But I mean, I waited on Joseph Boyden, and look what happened to him, so maybe procrastination is a virtue.
March 23, 2017
I was not emotionally prepared for this book. I thought Imaginative, profound, bold storytelling with compelling characters. Absolutely gut-wrenching, raw. Part tale of myth, part epic family saga, part crime novel, fantasy, and 100% a story of resilience...I can't quite put my finger on just *what* this book is, but it feels like a new thing. It took me quite awhile to read because it demands you stop, and reflect. Utterly absorbing. The way the story unfolds is a thing to behold. It feels fresh, non-linear and deeply rooted in the Sto:lo culture. An extremely challenging read, thematically, emotionally, spiritually. As many other reviewers noted, this book made me, as a Settler, very aware of my whiteness and privilege, and requires reflection on the part of the reader.
January 4, 2016
Celia’s Song is dedicated “to all those children who were removed from our homes and who did not survive residential school.” Lee Maracle tells the tale of a two-headed sea-serpent, Restless and Loyal, who pull against each other, creating devastation because the people have failed to feed them through honouring the dead. The balance between the two has been destroyed and the restless, voracious, destructive serpent head runs rampant until the villagers learn to stop feeding it and begin to heal themselves. Each story is directed first of all to an indigenous readership but creates space for a widening circle of reception and engagement.
March 8, 2020
Unlike another reader, I found the beginning of this book the most difficult to read. It was challenging for me to stay interested but I kept reading. For me, the latter half of the novel is what makes the book. Throughout the novel, we are given a first hand look into a family who has been broken by many tragedies, both old and recent. The family must learn to mend the wounds by looking to each other and their own tradition. Near the end, we see the stories come to a close and we see the powerful effects of healing, tradition, culture, and family. This book leaves you with a feeling that is something like a mix of inspiration and hope.
December 26, 2014
"Without song wind cannot play in our bodies....Songs are about light....Breath across vocal cords, rendered melodic and rhythmic, can inspire humans to resist the most terrible tyranny. Breath across vocal cords, uttered softly, can settle the fears of a child...Song's breath across vocal cords can heal the sick, raise the dead, and encourage the living to go on in the face of terror"
October 14, 2016
This is a beautiful book, full of spirit and hope. It can be read on its own or after reading Ravensong.
May 21, 2018
I couldn’t get into the many shifting narrators, especially the mink who kept interpreting the other narrators — to tell us how we’re supposed to feel about the narrative action, I guess. Abandoned.
November 25, 2022
I did this book a bit of a disservice in the last 50 pages trying to read it with conversation going on around me… so I definitely missed some things. But I still felt it was a really good read.
There’s a pivotal shift in the middle of the book. It goes from slow and meandering to kind of manic. The second half is easy to get sucked into. I can’t decide if I’d prefer the tension to be more spread through the whole book or if this half and half approach worked fine. It does feel balanced, so maybe it’s fine!
I struggled a bit to keep track of the characters but it didn’t matter too much how they were all related - it mattered that they were a family and a community dealing with old and new crises. I very much enjoyed that.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about the event in the middle of the book because it was just so awful, but I thought Maracle used the event in the best way. She explores colonialism and white supremacy by contrasting how the Sto:lo community chooses to handle the crisis with the way white people expect it to be handled. And I think she really challenges the reader with this extreme scenario.
The writing style mostly worked for me because it was concise and clear, but there were so many short, simple sentences and clauses I almost felt like I was walking down a steep hill - pushed along faster than I even wanted to go. And I’m a fast reader!
There’s also some magical realism elements here (if it’s appropriate to call it that) that I really enjoyed. That’s my favorite kind of contemporary fiction.
There’s a pivotal shift in the middle of the book. It goes from slow and meandering to kind of manic. The second half is easy to get sucked into. I can’t decide if I’d prefer the tension to be more spread through the whole book or if this half and half approach worked fine. It does feel balanced, so maybe it’s fine!
I struggled a bit to keep track of the characters but it didn’t matter too much how they were all related - it mattered that they were a family and a community dealing with old and new crises. I very much enjoyed that.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about the event in the middle of the book because it was just so awful, but I thought Maracle used the event in the best way. She explores colonialism and white supremacy by contrasting how the Sto:lo community chooses to handle the crisis with the way white people expect it to be handled. And I think she really challenges the reader with this extreme scenario.
The writing style mostly worked for me because it was concise and clear, but there were so many short, simple sentences and clauses I almost felt like I was walking down a steep hill - pushed along faster than I even wanted to go. And I’m a fast reader!
There’s also some magical realism elements here (if it’s appropriate to call it that) that I really enjoyed. That’s my favorite kind of contemporary fiction.
August 18, 2020
In het kort gaat het over cultuurclash en wat voor verstrekkende invloed de komst van de witte mens op de oorspronkelijke bewoners van Canada heeft ( gehad ).
Het verhaal wordt verteld door een nerts, een 'shapeshifter' die zo verslag kan doen van het gebeuren; naar mijn idee dus een soort alwetende verteller. Er worden verschillende personages uitgelicht, waardoor het verhaal vanuit verschillende perspectieven belicht wordt. Dan is er ook nog een tweekoppige slang, die ooit als een soort amulet dienstdeed om het longhouse te beschermen, maar met het overlijden van de bewoners en de daaropvolgende verlatenheid van dat longhouse, een eigen leven is gaan leiden en nu goed en kwaad vertegenwoordigt ( in het boek heten de koppen Loyal en Restless ). Hoe meer Restless zich voedt, hoe kleiner de invloed van Loyal kan worden. ( "Wat je aandacht geeft, groeit" ? )
Eigenlijk is het verhaal te complex om zo kort weer te geven, het lezen ging in mijn geval ook niet snel; er staat zo veel in.. !
De cultuurclash is niet alleen tussen Indianen en witte mensen, maar ook binnen de generaties, mede onder invloed van de witte mens ook wel.
Laat ik het er maar op houden, dat ik het een geweldig boek vind, bomvol informatie en goed geschreven.
Het verhaal wordt verteld door een nerts, een 'shapeshifter' die zo verslag kan doen van het gebeuren; naar mijn idee dus een soort alwetende verteller. Er worden verschillende personages uitgelicht, waardoor het verhaal vanuit verschillende perspectieven belicht wordt. Dan is er ook nog een tweekoppige slang, die ooit als een soort amulet dienstdeed om het longhouse te beschermen, maar met het overlijden van de bewoners en de daaropvolgende verlatenheid van dat longhouse, een eigen leven is gaan leiden en nu goed en kwaad vertegenwoordigt ( in het boek heten de koppen Loyal en Restless ). Hoe meer Restless zich voedt, hoe kleiner de invloed van Loyal kan worden. ( "Wat je aandacht geeft, groeit" ? )
Eigenlijk is het verhaal te complex om zo kort weer te geven, het lezen ging in mijn geval ook niet snel; er staat zo veel in.. !
De cultuurclash is niet alleen tussen Indianen en witte mensen, maar ook binnen de generaties, mede onder invloed van de witte mens ook wel.
Laat ik het er maar op houden, dat ik het een geweldig boek vind, bomvol informatie en goed geschreven.
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June 6, 2021Literary fiction. By Sto:lo writer Lee Maracle. I picked this one up almost at random – I've read one book of Maracle's nonfiction and really liked it, but never any of her fiction, and I added this to my order because of name recognition not because I knew anything about the book. But I'm so glad I did. Super intense in its portrayal of elements of unvarnished colonial violence and trauma, but ultimately hopeful. For me, the most remarkable aspect of craft in this book was the way that the early sections wove so seamlessly across perspective and place and time, shifting without warning between one paragraph and the next yet somehow always managing to bring you along without making it seem like an effort and to weave a nonlinear whole greater than the sequence of its parts. In the rest of the book, the story stayed more rooted in place and person, though still with a few shifts here and there, and used one family's navigation of one specific, horrific instance of violence to tell a broader story about that family, that village, and colonization more generally. A hard read, but really, really good.
November 28, 2021
Not embarrassed to say I found out about this book reading Lee Maracle's obituary, she passed to the far shore this fall at the age of 71 having accomplished so much in so many places. The novel -- and it almost feels wrong to call it that since it feels like a life lived in a very real community that is large enough for supernatural (two-headed) serpents, talking (shape-shifting) animal narrators, and spirits of deceased family members -- is a page-turner that draws the reader in at multiple levels. It is manifold and multi-layered: personal saga, magical realism, cultural history, family chronicle, and jeremiad. The bite of Indigenous wit, to put it euphemistically, when it comes to assaying the legacy of white settlers' sadistic ignorance, is a bracing spice to this savory stew of family loss, regret, and redemption. I loved the shit out of this book. My onyl regret is that I have come to this literature so late, and wasted so much of my literary life reading white male narcissists.
June 7, 2022
This was a difficult book to read for several reasons. Firstly I had so much trouble keeping track of all the characters, the author doesn’t tell us who they are or how they are related to Celia, who is the main character. I kept having to look back in the book to see when they were first introduced, and even then, they often weren’t identified. There were sisters, uncles, aunts, children…jeez it went on and on With new characters coming into the book in the last few chapters. Who the hell was Madeline? Because I am not an indigenous person, there were several terms in the book that were completely alien to me and never explained. Then in the middle of the book was this heinous crime against a 5 yr old girl, and why the women involved didn’t seek immediate medical attention for her remains a ridiculous mystery to me. It was a slog to get through it. The first rule of any writer is to be kind to the reader, and in my opinion this author just wasn’t.
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