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May Spoon
A young girl has major difficulties keeping up with her not-so-ordinary family.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 25, 2024
I wished it wouldn't end! Such a great feeling.
"A. Carleon" (aka author Rohan O'Grady) narrates a short period in her early teen years within the pages of her super private journal. Ann Carleon isn't the name given to her, but our narrator despises her birth name of Isabel, so if she wants to be called Ann Carleon - after her grandmother's maiden name - then so be it! Ann details her life and the people in it with verve, a sometimes spiteful wit, and a certain amount of cluelessness: her brilliant and lauded but quite unbearable father "He" and her equally brilliant older sister "Fatso" (who actually isn't - that's just Ann scoring some resentful points) and her mentally unwell mother "She"; her school mates, various other adults and relatives and crushes and a sweet dog who all play key roles in her various dramas, especially her malevolent elderly friend "The General." Ann is a quirky, entirely self-absorbed little thing and not exactly a spreader of love and joy. But she's lovable and certainly relatable to me, or at least the me that was once her age. Sometimes dreadfully maudlin, other times sardonic and wise to bullshit, at all times almost helplessly herself, Ann is both a unique and very familiar creation. It was a pleasure to be in her company.
And poor Ann needs some company! She's an often lonely and iconoclastic young lady (the latter adjective probably explaining the former) with an eccentric family including a mother who has become locked in the past over the horrifying death of her son in the Vietnam War, friends who want to form an exclusive club but perhaps without her, and an obsession with God that leads her to construct a hilariously horrifying pagan idol in an attempt to somehow attract His attention. Because she has some questions she'd like answered. She lives in a small seaside town in late '70s Canada, a town whose charms are rapidly crumbling away thanks to modern development. Ann hates these kinds of changes, really all changes in general, and she hates unanswered questions. Ann could use someone to talk to besides her dog and the misanthropic, flower-obsessed General down the block. Because things can get rather dark at times. Fortunately for her (and her readers), at least she has her journal.
Rohan O'Grady firmly rejects sentimentality but still revels in all of the highs and lows of childhood. Her heroine is vital and real; the way O'Grady so completely lived in her head amazed me. There are a good number of tragic and disturbing things that occur in Ann's life - some of which she barely even recognizes, and others that she purposely avoids thinking about - but O'Grady doesn't make her story a remotely sad one. The book is bubbly, prickly, thoughtful, unpretentious, completely charming, fully alive.
"The May Spoon" is an odd little spoon found by Ann and her sister; Ann recalls the afternoon the spoon was found with clarity, dreaminess, and a certain wonder. It is symbolic of a strangely surreal moment out of time, memorable yet indescribable; similar to déjà vu, but brighter, sharper. A sublime bit of time, one that you remember for no particular reason except the world seemed somehow different, somehow transformed into a beautiful place. I had a May Spoon experience reading this book.
"A. Carleon" (aka author Rohan O'Grady) narrates a short period in her early teen years within the pages of her super private journal. Ann Carleon isn't the name given to her, but our narrator despises her birth name of Isabel, so if she wants to be called Ann Carleon - after her grandmother's maiden name - then so be it! Ann details her life and the people in it with verve, a sometimes spiteful wit, and a certain amount of cluelessness: her brilliant and lauded but quite unbearable father "He" and her equally brilliant older sister "Fatso" (who actually isn't - that's just Ann scoring some resentful points) and her mentally unwell mother "She"; her school mates, various other adults and relatives and crushes and a sweet dog who all play key roles in her various dramas, especially her malevolent elderly friend "The General." Ann is a quirky, entirely self-absorbed little thing and not exactly a spreader of love and joy. But she's lovable and certainly relatable to me, or at least the me that was once her age. Sometimes dreadfully maudlin, other times sardonic and wise to bullshit, at all times almost helplessly herself, Ann is both a unique and very familiar creation. It was a pleasure to be in her company.
And poor Ann needs some company! She's an often lonely and iconoclastic young lady (the latter adjective probably explaining the former) with an eccentric family including a mother who has become locked in the past over the horrifying death of her son in the Vietnam War, friends who want to form an exclusive club but perhaps without her, and an obsession with God that leads her to construct a hilariously horrifying pagan idol in an attempt to somehow attract His attention. Because she has some questions she'd like answered. She lives in a small seaside town in late '70s Canada, a town whose charms are rapidly crumbling away thanks to modern development. Ann hates these kinds of changes, really all changes in general, and she hates unanswered questions. Ann could use someone to talk to besides her dog and the misanthropic, flower-obsessed General down the block. Because things can get rather dark at times. Fortunately for her (and her readers), at least she has her journal.
Rohan O'Grady firmly rejects sentimentality but still revels in all of the highs and lows of childhood. Her heroine is vital and real; the way O'Grady so completely lived in her head amazed me. There are a good number of tragic and disturbing things that occur in Ann's life - some of which she barely even recognizes, and others that she purposely avoids thinking about - but O'Grady doesn't make her story a remotely sad one. The book is bubbly, prickly, thoughtful, unpretentious, completely charming, fully alive.
"The May Spoon" is an odd little spoon found by Ann and her sister; Ann recalls the afternoon the spoon was found with clarity, dreaminess, and a certain wonder. It is symbolic of a strangely surreal moment out of time, memorable yet indescribable; similar to déjà vu, but brighter, sharper. A sublime bit of time, one that you remember for no particular reason except the world seemed somehow different, somehow transformed into a beautiful place. I had a May Spoon experience reading this book.
Want to Read
January 5, 2018Recommended to me by mark monday, which is good enough for me!
(Where tf are my notes on the app, GoodReads?)
(Where tf are my notes on the app, GoodReads?)
March 28, 2018
Hat tip to mark monday; do read his review.
The May Spoon is somewhere on the spectrum with Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm, Anne of Green Gables, To Kill a Mockingbird, et. al. Little girls in tragedy and triumph, little girls growing up.
Finding the May spoon while digging in the garden was a moment both profound and magical and as we grow up these moments of wonder come increasingly far apart, but if we're lucky they never quite desert us. As time passes things change, people change, we change and Ann Carleon (the nom de plume of Isabel McMurry) takes a dim view of all change, the common perspective of those who suffer tragedy both real and perceived more often than triumph.
June O'Grady Skinner (1922-2014) lived her entire life in Vancouver where she married and raised three children. In her forties she wrote four novels as Rohan O'Grady and her fifth, The May Spoon, in her early sixties.
This is the first of her work that I've read. Wonderful prose, clean and direct; characters, distinct and well formed; observations, sharp and unobvious. The diary of A. Carleon could have continued into boarding school and I would have happily followed.
The May Spoon is somewhere on the spectrum with Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm, Anne of Green Gables, To Kill a Mockingbird, et. al. Little girls in tragedy and triumph, little girls growing up.
Finding the May spoon while digging in the garden was a moment both profound and magical and as we grow up these moments of wonder come increasingly far apart, but if we're lucky they never quite desert us. As time passes things change, people change, we change and Ann Carleon (the nom de plume of Isabel McMurry) takes a dim view of all change, the common perspective of those who suffer tragedy both real and perceived more often than triumph.
June O'Grady Skinner (1922-2014) lived her entire life in Vancouver where she married and raised three children. In her forties she wrote four novels as Rohan O'Grady and her fifth, The May Spoon, in her early sixties.
This is the first of her work that I've read. Wonderful prose, clean and direct; characters, distinct and well formed; observations, sharp and unobvious. The diary of A. Carleon could have continued into boarding school and I would have happily followed.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews