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Von Hand zu Hand
The brilliant debut novel by Helen Weinzweig, one of the first feminist writers in Canada and the award-winning author of Basic Black With Pearls . In Helen Weinzweig’s brilliant debut novel, a wedding reception becomes a gothic dream. The bride is not all she seems and there is something ambiguous about the groom — and just about everyone else at the surreal and strangely moving wedding. Like a piece of music, Passing Ceremony is composed of brief, suggestive fragments that grow into a tightly integrated whole. There are bits of real and imagined conversation; polite dialogues that slide into mad comic banality; and scenes that could be quiet nightmares out of Borges. A satire and a rueful meditation on the ways people hurt one another, Weinzweig gives us a world suspended in time, an uneasy territory of the soul, which we all inhabit. This edition features a new introduction by Jim Polk.
- GenresFiction
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Helen Weinzweig
7 books15 followersHelen Weinzweig (1915–2010) was a Canadian writer. The author of two novels and a short story collection, her novel Basic Black with Pearls won the Toronto Book Award in 1981, and her short story collection A View from the Roof was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award for English language fiction in 1989.
Born in Poland in 1915, she emigrated to Canada at age 10 with her mother, and married composer John Weinzweig on July 12, 1940. She published her first short story, "Surprise!", in Canadian Forum in 1967, and her debut novel Passing Ceremony was published in 1973. She came to be regarded as one of Canada's first important feminist writers. Her style was marked by experimental forms with some aspects of metafiction; in her short story "Journey to Porquis", a writer on a train trip realizes that all of his fellow passengers are characters in his novel.
Weinzweig also wrote and produced a one-act play, My Mother's Luck, and several of her short stories in A View from the Roof were adapted for stage and CBC Radio broadcast by playwright Dave Carley.
Weinzweig died in 2010, aged 96.
(from Wikipedia)
Born in Poland in 1915, she emigrated to Canada at age 10 with her mother, and married composer John Weinzweig on July 12, 1940. She published her first short story, "Surprise!", in Canadian Forum in 1967, and her debut novel Passing Ceremony was published in 1973. She came to be regarded as one of Canada's first important feminist writers. Her style was marked by experimental forms with some aspects of metafiction; in her short story "Journey to Porquis", a writer on a train trip realizes that all of his fellow passengers are characters in his novel.
Weinzweig also wrote and produced a one-act play, My Mother's Luck, and several of her short stories in A View from the Roof were adapted for stage and CBC Radio broadcast by playwright Dave Carley.
Weinzweig died in 2010, aged 96.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 9, 2018
I picked up this on a whim. Fragmented experimental literature first published in 1973. Who knew? This is the sort of thing I love but that seems to lie below the surface in Can Lit.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2018/05/09/to...
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2018/05/09/to...
June 13, 2022
In 1971, the editor at House of Anansi press received a stack of fancy bond paper in a jewelry box tied with a ribbon, with instructions to “throw the pages into the air and arrange them as they fell”. While this book did arrive at my doorstep bound as most books, this introduction to the book (by said editor) entranced me to this novella.
Passing Ceremony is gothic at its best -- a series of vignettes of the attendees at a wedding, where the bride has a reputation and the groom is gay, and none of the attendees really want to be there in the first place. The bride’s father is there from Mexico his a new wife younger than the bride and a new baby. An elderly grandparent feels like people are trying to kill her. A man is trying to find some new woman to pick up, while another woman thinks about her lover. One man is looking forward to seeing if his dom could meet up later (if she’s not busy). All around the scenery of a wedding and reception that is literally only being done for the image of it.
I loved this book and the concept. While I’m sure slicing it out of its binding and tossing it around would create an excellent story, the organization of each vignette is creeping towards the end of what most people think is a joyous day. Instead, we see mockery, pain, misanthropy, unrequited love. Although, it does seem like the bride and groom do truly care for each other as friends, and this was a tiny life raft in a book of social turbulence.
Its a quick read, and certainly one that can be picked up and put down at a whim. Helen Weinzweig has such a gift for capturing the desperate malaise of women trapped by society in the 70s. Basic Black With Pearls captures it rather differently, but both are excellent works of Canadian feminist fiction that should be on any Canadian’s - or feminist’s - reading list.
Passing Ceremony is gothic at its best -- a series of vignettes of the attendees at a wedding, where the bride has a reputation and the groom is gay, and none of the attendees really want to be there in the first place. The bride’s father is there from Mexico his a new wife younger than the bride and a new baby. An elderly grandparent feels like people are trying to kill her. A man is trying to find some new woman to pick up, while another woman thinks about her lover. One man is looking forward to seeing if his dom could meet up later (if she’s not busy). All around the scenery of a wedding and reception that is literally only being done for the image of it.
I loved this book and the concept. While I’m sure slicing it out of its binding and tossing it around would create an excellent story, the organization of each vignette is creeping towards the end of what most people think is a joyous day. Instead, we see mockery, pain, misanthropy, unrequited love. Although, it does seem like the bride and groom do truly care for each other as friends, and this was a tiny life raft in a book of social turbulence.
Its a quick read, and certainly one that can be picked up and put down at a whim. Helen Weinzweig has such a gift for capturing the desperate malaise of women trapped by society in the 70s. Basic Black With Pearls captures it rather differently, but both are excellent works of Canadian feminist fiction that should be on any Canadian’s - or feminist’s - reading list.
December 6, 2012
strange little book
January 2, 2021
Eine promiskuitive Frau, in den bürgerlichen Kreisen als Flittchen verschrien, heiratet einen schwulen Mann, der sehnsüchtig seinem untreuen Liebhaber hinterhertrauert. Auf ihrer Hochzeit in Toronto zu Gast sind ihr Ex-Lover; die verrückte, im Zimmer eingesperrte Großmutter; ein verkleideter Pfarrer; ihre betrunkene Mutter; ihr Vater mit neuer Frau, einer blutjungen Mexikanerin, die die Gesellschaft brüskiert, als sie das gemeinsame Baby barbusig stillt. Und einige mehr. Alle, am meisten die Frauen, sind elend vom Leben (und den Männern) betrogen, sind frustriert von Ehebruch, schlechtem Sex, verlorenen Träumen, ihrer Einsamkeit. Ihre Stimmen und Gespräche, aus denen der größte Teil des Texts besteht, werden unvermittelt in kleinen Szenen erzählt, die die Sprecher:innen erst aus den Aussagen heraus erschließbar machen.
Als Anhängerin des nouveau roman schert sich Helen Weinzweig nicht sehr um Handlung oder Figurencharakterisierung, liebt vielmehr formale Experimente. Sie gilt als eine der wichtigsten feministischen Autorinnen Kanadas. Sie verfasste nur zwei Romane und einige Kurzgeschichten, fing erst mit 45 Jahren an zu schreiben. Aber niemals wurde eine ihrer eingereichten Geschichten zur Veröffentlichung abgelehnt! Eine präzise Meisterschaft, besonders bei den messerscharfen Dialogen, in denen die Charaktere ihre ehrliche Meinung nie zurückhalten, mit zynischen Entlarvungen und ironischen Spitzen aufeinander losgehen. Weinzweigs Stil in dieser schwarzen Komödie zeichnet sich durch einen klaren, oft bissigen Ton aus, mit dem die Story in einem gesellschaftskritischen Ende mündet: Vereint als Geächtete nutzen Braut und Bräutigam die konventionelle Form der Ehe, um den fortwährenden Vorwürfen gegen sie zu entsagen und sich im Schein des heiligen Ehegelöbnisses in ein freieres Leben zu verabschieden. Ein Arrangement, gewiss kein Happy End.
Fantastisch ist überdies das genauso informative wie warmherzige Nachwort ihres Lektors James Polk, der dem großartigen Text (übersetzt von Hans-Christian Oeser) damit selbst ein vollendetes Kleinod seiner Gattung zur Seite stellt.
Ein böses Buch in schönem Leinen, unglaublich frisch und serienhaft erzählt!
Als Anhängerin des nouveau roman schert sich Helen Weinzweig nicht sehr um Handlung oder Figurencharakterisierung, liebt vielmehr formale Experimente. Sie gilt als eine der wichtigsten feministischen Autorinnen Kanadas. Sie verfasste nur zwei Romane und einige Kurzgeschichten, fing erst mit 45 Jahren an zu schreiben. Aber niemals wurde eine ihrer eingereichten Geschichten zur Veröffentlichung abgelehnt! Eine präzise Meisterschaft, besonders bei den messerscharfen Dialogen, in denen die Charaktere ihre ehrliche Meinung nie zurückhalten, mit zynischen Entlarvungen und ironischen Spitzen aufeinander losgehen. Weinzweigs Stil in dieser schwarzen Komödie zeichnet sich durch einen klaren, oft bissigen Ton aus, mit dem die Story in einem gesellschaftskritischen Ende mündet: Vereint als Geächtete nutzen Braut und Bräutigam die konventionelle Form der Ehe, um den fortwährenden Vorwürfen gegen sie zu entsagen und sich im Schein des heiligen Ehegelöbnisses in ein freieres Leben zu verabschieden. Ein Arrangement, gewiss kein Happy End.
Fantastisch ist überdies das genauso informative wie warmherzige Nachwort ihres Lektors James Polk, der dem großartigen Text (übersetzt von Hans-Christian Oeser) damit selbst ein vollendetes Kleinod seiner Gattung zur Seite stellt.
Ein böses Buch in schönem Leinen, unglaublich frisch und serienhaft erzählt!
June 15, 2020
A short intense read. I am reminded of the contemporaneous films of Canadian "docudramatiste" Allan King (I think explicitly of A Married Couple (1969) but the skill of trespassing into the uncomfortably personal is common to all his films). Indeed, this work is a guiltily pleasurable intrusion into the miserable lives of others. Shards of unfulfillment and contempt exposed at an unhappy wedding. Bitter words, despicable actions. Some interior thoughts, others omniscient observation (but never an objective perspective). A scathing critique of unfulfilled aspirations, bad decisions, betrayal and mendacity. She pushes the edges of absurdity, but never goes there - to her credit. Weinzweig wrote two novels during her lifetime. This first one demonstrates the keen observatory skills she later honed in Basic Black With Pearls. The introduction provides valuable social and creative context - both for the work and the author.
February 6, 2019
This is undoubtedly the strangest piece I’ve read in some time. It is esoteric and surreal, a story told in fragments, vignettes. There is a wedding, and people—guests, families, bride and groom—seem happy, but preoccupied. There is something going on behind the scenes, or between the lines, and whatever it is is hinted at through many different perspectives. There are a number of things, in fact, but each of the pieces seems in some way to be related to the whole. I’m pretty sure I was not reading perceptively enough to pick up in all the nuances, and this slim volume slipped by so quickly, I’m sure I missed some things. But I got enough I think, enough to think about.
October 9, 2017
2.5 stars
May 15, 2025
Wow. If you like experimental literature, this is it. People and memories and thoughts and a whole lot of nastiness.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews