The Certainties

by Aislinn Hunter

A vivid, moving novel reminiscent of Anthony Doerr and Michael Ondaatje, about the entwined fates of two very different refugees.

In 1940, as the shadow of war lengthens over Europe, three mysterious travelers enter a village in Spain. They have the appearance of Parisian intellectuals, but the trio of two men and a woman are starving and exhausted from crossing illegally through the Pyrenees. Their story, told over a period of 48 tense hours, is narrated by one of the men, who slowly accepts his unthinkable fate. In a voice despairing and elegant, he calmly considers what he should do, and weighs what any one life means. As he does so, his attention is caught by a five-year-old named Pia who wanders near his cafe table. To Pia he begins to address all that he thinks and feels in his final hours--envisioning a rich future life for her that both reflects and contrasts with his own.

Meanwhile, in the 1980s, a woman named Pia seeks solitude on a remote island in the Atlantic, where she works at an inn and reflects on her chaotic childhood. As Pia's story begins, a raging storm engulfs the island and a boat flounders offshore. Pia and her fellow islanders rush to help--and past and present calamities collide.

By turns elegiac and heart-pounding, a love letter in the guise of a song of despair, The Certainties is a moving and transformative blend of historical and speculative fiction--a novel that shows us what it means to bear witness, and to attend to those who seek refuge, past and present.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Canada, Writing, Ebooks, War

224 pages, Hardcover

Published May 19, 2020

About the author

Aislinn Hunter is the author of six books: two books of poetry, three books of fiction and a book of lyric essays. She is a contributing editor at Arc Magazine and has contributed to numerous anthologies. She has a BFA in The History of Art and in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria, an MFA from The University of British Columbia, an MSc in Writing and Cultural Politics from The University of Edinburgh and is currently finishing a PhD in English Literature at Edinburgh. She teaches Creative Writing part-time at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and lives in Vancouver with her husband Glenn and two Border collies.

Reviews

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

We’ve been told that in this part of the country the bells are rung when someone in the village dies, regardless of the hour, and in this way everyone knows a death has occurred. I imagine the bellman must be tired.

The Certainties is a beautifully written story, but unfortunately, I never felt fully engaged in it and never gained a real sense of who Pia is. I also wasn’t a fan of the professor’s underage (he was 12, she was 17), incestuous “relationship” with his cousin (in which she was trying to “understand her power” and he was okay with it whether it was “overt manipulation or encounters of the more romantic kind”) and was completely drawn out of the story every time it was mentioned.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tender introspective book about two individuals who meet briefly in 1940 under strained circumstances leaving an indelible mark on each other. One is a middle-aged Jewish German scholar and professor who has just made a grueling journey by foot from Marseilles France to Portbou Spain, fleeing the Gestapo with a group of friends. They are informed to their dismay that their exit visas are no longer valid in a change of regulations under Franco's rule implemented just a day before their arrival.

Nothing is in order. Nothing has been in order since we left Paris and joined the march south. No matter where we stand, the ground shifts below us.

This gentleman's journey and life story is modeled upon that of real life person Walter Benjamin. I found it instructive and illuminating to read more from non-fictional research sources about his background, perilous journey, scholarship works as well as speculation regarding the authenticity of his suicide note. Aislinn Hunter states in the afterword that she spent some time in Portbou collecting information for the book. She has exercised some artistic license with his traveling companions' identities and their interrogations by the authorities. Irrefutably, by the time we encounter him in 1940, he had already spent time in a concentration camp in Nevers and was in poor health. I found that Ms Hunter quite convincingly chronicled and portrayed his academic philosophical interests and musings; in Ovid's Metamorphosis, mirrors and bridges. This in turn has a mirroring effect many years later on an adult Pia when she reads a philosophical treatise about mirrors and is grappling with her sense of identity and being. Walter Benjamin's story is heart-breakingly tragic, a loss of an intellectual giant and a sobering reminder of the cruelty and mass horror humanity is capable of inflicting on fellow human beings.

Those of us who have come through the last few months also know what it is to fracture.

The old life becomes the dream. Neither is more real than the other, except that one is an above-water version, and the other has been pulled under - one is the face of a man who no longer recognizes himself: the other is the face of a man submerged. (allusion to the myth of Narcissus and his own situation)

Pia, as a five-year old girl, meets the professor while out with her mother in Portbou and remembers and dreams about the moment her mother reaches out to touch his arm in sympathy for his plight. The irrepressible little Spanish waves exuberantly to the professor, which uplifts him and gives him a sense of being seen (as opposed to those who want to negate and erase his existence). She grows up "to become someone who moved quietly, who studied other people's introspection; whose gaze followed theirs as she listens to what they said and what they omitted." Her mother, who is a reporter covering dangerous topics like worker strikes, protests and elections in Spain, disappears twice; the second time murdered by the Spanish regime in the 1970s, thereby making Pia a "daughter of the slaughtered. " She lives an unmoored nomadic existence. At the present time we encounter Pia again, she is around fifty years of age, living on an unnamed island (in the afterword revealed to be based off the island of Islay) facing the Atlantic Ocean, working as a chef in a hotel. In the course of catering for a wedding party, there is a terrible storm and the remains of a boat and bodies of refugees wash onshore. Pia makes it a personal project to document all identifying features of the corpses with the aim of giving closure to their loved ones.

In a CBC radio interview for her book promotion, Aislinn Hunter expounded on witnessing and grief:
Interviewing so many soldiers from all over the world, NATO forces, people who'd been in Ebola camps, in Iraq, and on those beaches where the bodies were coming up — I kept saying, "How do you live with the uncertainty?"

The answer time and time again was — training, training, training. In my Writing as Witness course, one of the things that I speak about is being prepared for what isn't safe and then having a way to be safe in that. A lot of times in our culture, we want to exit painful or uncomfortable situations. It's especially true for my students at the undergraduate level.

What if we just stay in the room? What if we allow ourselves to be seen having these feelings? There's a question of trying to be safe in these situations. But there's also a question of recognising that the world is a complex place and that part of living is maybe being willing to bear other people's pain.


This compassionate contemplative approach defines The Certainties and has been strongly espoused in the Tibetan Buddhist teachings of nun Pema Chodron.

[Penny (Literary Hoarders) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a heavy, melancholic and spare read. Beautiful and fragmented images formed from the writing. It reminded me a little bit of Nicole Krauss' The History of Love. I was told too that it reminds of Beatrice and Virgil so I've added that to the list of books to read.

I feel it's highly likely this would make the Giller Prize Longlist? It contains many elements of books that are normally found on those literary prize lists. Also contains similar themes found in the other books I've been reading for the Shadow Giller.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to 49th Shelf and Penguin Random House Canada for a giveaway copy of this book! I hadn't heard of this novel before, so I'm glad for the experience to branch out and try a new author.

I'm sorry to give this book such a low rating because Hunter's style is wonderfully flowing and compelling, but the combination of a frustrating conclusion and numbing amounts of violent imagery ultimately alienated me from the story. Thus, while I was deeply engaged with the first chapters, revelling in the way Hunter delves into these characters' minds, as I continued, I kept being thrown further out of the narrative.

Although it's expected that a novel taking place during WWII would contain scenes of horror, by the time I reached the most deeply powerful scenes in the yard of an abandoned farmhouse, I was too numbed by previous violent imagery in the novel for those images to affect me. Those moments lose their power because Hunter includes many horrifying scenes before then - a mortally wounded mouse smashed by a log, a horse left to die in the road after being shot, and so on. The novel is indeed filled with violence against animals and dead animals, and it's curious that this is such a focus for Hunter's narrative.

One positive aspect of the novel is that, despite knowing that the philosopher (apparently based on Walter Benjamnin) is doomed to commit suicide, I still held out hope that he would make it. He was not a likeable character, but Hunter gives him such a depth of human feeling at times that I wanted to reach through the pages to stop him, to tell him that it wasn't foolish to hope. So while parts of his narrative were alienating (like the mouse scene and his strange incestual relationship with his older cousin), his characterization was rich in detail and humanity. This is a major reason why I'm so divided about this novel.

In comparison, Pia was a harder character to pin down, in part because she is so shaped by trauma - I wish that the narrative had given her more closure. The connection between the characters stretched my suspension of disbelief, but I let that go - however, there were some fascinating connections, such as the way that they both emerge from traumatic backgrounds, Pia reads his work, and they both discover the decimated bodies of parents and a son. If anything, I wanted Hunter to do more with this connection, especially on Pia's side. I loved how, in that last scene, she wants to bear witness to the disaster - "Look", she tells herself - but we know so little about that disaster - a wrecked boat - that it feels like part of her ending is missing. Because we see Pia from afar, without the same narrative closeness as we get with the philosopher, something feels lacking from her parts of the novel, especially at the end. I hope that the ending means she will bear witness like her mother did, but the narrative is too evasive. It may be a case of the literary qualities of the writing overpowering its ability to tell a cohesive story all the way through.

In the end, I rate this a 2.5/5 because despite its positive qualities, it was an overall frustrating novel, one that I had to push myself to pick up and read.

[Kriti | Armed with A Book · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read memoirs about the Holocaust and stories about spies but nothing like The Certainties. This book have two protagonists - a fifty year old man who is referred to as the professor, narrating in first person; the second a woman named Pia. The story goes back and forth between the professor and Pia. In the 1940s, the professor is trying to escape to America with his two companions. Having spent some time in the camps, the professor's possessions have been confiscated by the Germans and he might be on the list of people that the Germans are looking for. While his fate hangs by a thin thread, the professor meets five year old Pia and he starts to talk to her as he comes to terms with his precarious situation. Forty years apart, we learn about Pia and her nomadic life, the people around her recovering from the war and the conditions in which she lives.

There is something about this book that kept me reading. Maybe it was the atmospheric prose, maybe the unique connection between the two characters or maybe it was simply learning about the plight of an immigrant and refugee before the Second World War. There are a lot of intellectual people in the professor's side of the story - artists, painters, elites and researchers - who are affected by war. I found the storytelling quite visual and the scenes depicting the city and the sea transported me to these places. There is commentary about death and meaning which I really liked and found a bunch of quotes that struck me. Example: "When we are dead, we will not know our nations".

Many thanks to the publisher for a complimentary review copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Detailed reading experience and thoughts coming soon on Armed with A Book.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more but struggled to get into this story. I usually enjoy stories centering around WWII, especially ones highlighting different aspects like this one on how life was for refugees. The best part of the book for me was when it came together at the end - getting there was a slog though. The prose is beautiful and the author focuses on quiet melancholy moments (appropriate for the people and time) but perhaps not a tone I was in a mindset to enjoy at present.

[Rena Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this 3.5 stars. The writing is beautiful but I found the timeline jumpy enough to where I got lost at times. A war story of refugees who must question every motive of those around them. Friend or foe? Truth or lie? Until they question live or die?

"While this book is a work of fiction, aspects of it were inspired by the life and death of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), whose alleged suicide in Portbou, Spain, informed a portion of this fiction’s plot."

I read this right after reading THE BOOK OF FORM & EMPTINIESS by Ruth Ozeki. Walter Benjamin plays a huge role in that book, as inspiration to a character who influences the main characters. Ozeki uses quotes from Benjamin's work throughout the book. Strange coincidence.

[Evelynkeirstead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It is the wistful telling of two stories. One where three people flee Nazi persecution and land in a town hoping for safe passage to freedom. A chance meeting with a child while they wait for their papers links us to the second story, decades later, where the same child is now a young woman and working on an island in the Atlantic where fishing is the lifeblood of the inhabitants. What brought her there? What did she contribute in her chance meeting years before to the small group looking help? Less a story and more a glimpse into two brief moments in time.

[Claudia Casper]

This is one of those novels that fills me with the hunger to write. There is so much beauty and tenderness and sadness and connection and love. The writing is clear, luxurious, unusual, and ripe. The characters are so alive in their specificity, their flowing thoughts and memories, their acceptance of their predicament in history. The ending draws all the poetic threads together - Narcissus, the above water and below water worlds – the Walter Benjamin character above water – Pia below, and then at the last chapter they are switching places, the drowned coming from below water to the surface... like a rowboat with a body sent out on the water. And time also, the above surface of day to day living, and history – all the below surface. I was intrigued by the mystery of Pia, Benjamin’s strong connection to her, the world they inhabit both dreamy and objectively real. The Certainties reads like a love letter somehow – to sadness, to loss, and to love. With a deft narrative twist at the end. Its author is a beloved friend.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rarely read historical fiction, but loving Canada's many talented authors as I do, I was drawn to The Certainties.

It was very melancholic—start to finish—but with prose so beautiful I, too, was held captive.

A lovely story that I highly recommend.

[Harry Junior · Rating 5 out of 5]

The kind of writing that reminds me why good literature matters, and why I will always continue to write. A beautifully rendered, multi-layered narrative. Philosophical, full of grace and longing, and above all, a deep love for taking in the world. I was filled with emotion reading it, and in awe of the scope of its accomplishment.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. It is, simply, a work of art. At the same time, I'm sure I didn't understand it all...the ending...I may have to re-read it and that isn't a criticism it's just that for 230 pages there is a LOT packed in there. Ms.Hunter has written an incredible book. Thank you.

[Danny Aldham · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The Certainties’ is a different read. There is a doomed, claustrophobic feel to the sections where the three travelers are stuck in Portbou Spain. The scene where they are interviewed in a restaurant reminded me of the kitchen scene early in ‘Inglorious Basterds’, where Christoph Waltz so well plays the terrifying SS officer Hans Landa. In ‘The Certainties’ the Spanish are not so cartoon character evil, but are just as smothering in their approach. They use food as a weapon to the starving travelers and have a sadistic enjoyment in the power they wield.
Hunter’s earlier book ‘The World Before Us’ is one of my favourites, so I came to this book with high hopes. As a reader, I expected to be challenged, but I did not expect to be left forlorn.
I believe one of the highest goals of a well-written novel is that a reader can experience the world of the characters without the downside risk. We will not be sent back to face the Nazis but we share the gut wrenching fear of that prospect with the three travelers. We don’t bear responsibility for leaving a girl to die in a field, but share the shame. Here Hunter is successful.
As a reader and a writer, I take an interest in themes. I love stories, and great characters, without them a novel cannot be great. But what the stories explore is my interest. Here we see that Hunter’s theme is to bear witness. To speak of the atrocities we have seen. But then? I was left feeling the need for something more. Not a happy ending, but a glimpse of some possibly better world. Here and now, as we teeter on the edge of a fascist state taking place in America, this book made me feel more bleak and resigned to that terrible possibility. The brutality. Are we resigned to it?
I enjoyed the short section exploring how a man like Herr Gabler might climb to a position of power in a fascist state, but found it a fiction as imagined by the narrator. What the true story is, we will never know. As we will never know whether Suzanne and Bernard go forward or back to France. I wanted to know. With Certainty.
Some times and places I had trouble with. Where exactly is this island Pia is on? And what was the narrators name?
But these are quibbles. I am going to rate this book 5 stars, but with a warning. It is not a light summer read.
February 21, 2021

#writingCommunity #amwriting #writerslife #Writers #Authors @goodreads #bookreviews

The Certainties by Aislin Hunter
ISBN 9780735276871

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Certainties is a beautiful, melancholic story told in a dual perspective narrative. You follow the professor, who is a middle aged Jewish German man, and attempting to flee from the Gestapo with two others. They are captured in Spain and awaiting their fate over a period of 48 hours when the professor fleetingly meets a young girl named Pia, which provides him with a sense of being "seen". The story flashes 40 years in the future and follows Pia, who is living and working as a chef on a beautiful island in the Atlantic. She finds herself living a nomadic existence and does not have any family due to tragedy. A storm off the coast of her island leaves many dead and she makes it her mission to document the fallen in order to provide closure to their families.

I loved how the author described absolutely every situation in a very poetic way. I found this book nearly impossible to put down, and ended up reading it over the span of a couple days. It is truly a stunning novel, and I would recommend to anyone who enjoys historical fiction.

I saw this book at my local bookstore and the paperback cover is so beautiful that I had to bring it home for my collection. I'll definitely revisit this one in the future.

Thank you to net galley for providing an advanced copy of this book for review.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.⁠⠀
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🌟🌟🌟💫 (3.5 - I quite liked it!)⁠⠀
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I requested The Certainties by Aislinn Hunter because of the synopsis that promised a reflective and character driven story, deep and thoughtful. This is exactly what it is - do not read this novel looking for something cheerful.⁠⠀
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The Certainties is sad. In a hopeless kind of way, where you think a lot about the echoes of tragedy and how people are ultimately shaped by these kinds of experiences. Any novel about the 40's has this kind of tone, that makes me sit with my thoughts about it for quite awhile before writing any kind of review.⁠⠀
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This novel is also written beautifully. Hunter's skill with language brings her characters to life so that small comments about the state of someone's hair or clothing evokes empathy. This is a masterful work in showing instead of telling.⁠
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I want to give The Certainties four stars. The reason I can't is because if felt unfinished. I wanted two more chapters to sit with the main characters and find out what happens to them. It's a pet peeve of mine when the conclusion to a novel is left open-ended, even if it's intentional and is supposed to communicate something.⁠⠀
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This novel is for readers who enjoy character-driven stories, with a healthy dose of sadness.⁠⠀

[Brooke Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a sleeper, but complex and layered in a way that gives room for deeper connection. Follows multiple story lines in multiple locations during different time periods, which can make the characters a little difficult to follow at times, but to its credit was well executed. The central theme of Narcissus and the multiple interpretations of this story was interesting, as were the concepts of bridges and recreations.

One scene that stays with me was when the central character met two master craftsmen in a small town that were making reproductions of furniture from pictures they had acquired from Italy. He asked them if their intention was to reproduce the chairs perfectly, or to add something of themselves into the design. They laughed at the idea of putting part of themselves into the piece, that their absence in the work was what made it successful. An interesting reflection on the ego.

[Lewis Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reinforced my theory that novels written by poets are generally good because poets pay close attention to language. The Certainties seemed to me like a hybrid of Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise and Stephen Price’s Gaslight.

I’ve also just noticed that Hunter, Price, and El Akkad are all Canadian. We could also add Atwood to this list. Feel like I’m working toward a grand unified theory of something. If only I owned a cork board and a spool of red yarn!

Anyway I thought this book was beautiful and potent. The chapters from the point of view of the Walter Benjamin standin were particularly evocative of the evil and insanity of war. Reading this made me interested in trying some more of Hunter’s work in the future.

[kp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book. Hunter explores two stories: that of a German Jewish philospher (loosely based on Walter Benjamin) trapped in Spain while trying to flee Vichy France in 1940 and that of a woman drifting from job to job and travelling light in every way in the 1980s. The two protagonists encounter each other briefly when she is a child and he is awaiting his fate in Spain, but the real connection between the alternating narratives is the novel's contemplation of the effects of violence and loss on both victims and witnesses, And it's well-written too.

[Judy Dercksen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable book. 'The Certainties' recreates the ruined town of Portbou as three foreign travellers await their fate in a modest hotel. They imagine the possibilities of their future and dwell on the love, friendship, kindness, and comfort of lost friends. Hunter witnesses the horror of war, the moments of clarity found in solitude, the resilience of the human form. Even when faced with almost certain death, the spirit rises in celebration of life. This book is one to be celebrated.

[Doug Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will be a polarizing novel. There is no middle ground. The format is alternating stories in alternating chapters. Our only certainty in life is mortality, which could lead to a warning of don't read this book if you like happy. So much meaning packed into this small novel. Highly recommended for book clubs. Lot of discussion guaranteed. It is one of those novels I will need to read again in order to more fully understand it. I don't have to read it again to give it a 5 rating.

[Pauline · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deep (too deep for me) and introspective read, this was the story of a brief meeting between a Jewish scholar trying to flee the Nazi regime, and a young local girl. The story breaks between the scholars perspective as a refugee, and the girl’s life as a grown woman. I didn’t understand parts of this book, and really felt I didn’t get to know the characters well. I especially felt it just dropped off at the end, rather like the another was simply tired of writing.

[Lorelei · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am giving this one 3 stars because the writing was descriptive and I liked the characters. But what is clear to the author is not always clear to the reader and I had to go over things fairly often to ensure I understood what was taking place, right up until the end. I see from the reviews that I am not alone in this.

[Lyndi McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aislinn Hunter is a fascinating writer. I was unable to put down this book. The thoughts of the life of a man, the people he met and the terrors the emigrants endured in 1940 are interspersed with his discussions and analysis of books and authors. He met a young girl briefly and part of the book recounts a terrorizing storm one weekend in her life 40 years later.

[Pamk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very dark and poignant read. I found the writing very powerful and felt an underlying sense of dread while reading. There were some recurring themes (mirrors/reflections/Narcissis) that I didn't feel I really "got", but I sure did enjoy this book nonetheless. Will definitely look for other books by Ms. Hunter.

[Mariette · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of the 3 people travelling into Spain from France during WWII was impactful, so many people forced out of homes, villages and cities, completely displaced and trying to survive.
I understand how the author was connecting it to Pia’s story, but it just didn’t work well, I was waiting for something bigger to click.
A good story, but felt like 2 separate stories.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a deep and thoughtful story about memory and life. Two character from different time periods whose lives intertwine sort of. I really did like it and I think I need to read it again to truly rate it. The ending left me thoughtful.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

canadian author'

Pia is on PEI (or the magdeleen islands?) and her story is woven in with the sotry of 3 travwlers who travel the Pyrennes mountains after war ravaged Europe looking for escape. That part of the novel is narrated by one of the 3 travellers who meets 5 year old Pia.

[Taline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and poetic. Written by the author in the final 3 months of her husband's life, while he was dying of a brain tumour.(How did she possibly do that?) Much that needs to be untangled, unwoven, thought through.... an expansive book, told in a minimalist style.

[Connie McFarland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could have enjoyed it more.. such potential. And beautiful moments, at times brutal given the theme of being witness, a noble theme. But sadly I found some things just did not connect, or connections were too thin so one must reread to sort it out.

[Elisabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing.