Novellas in November 2023

Naomi

Dec 1

I love Novellas in November and have been so grateful that Rebecca and Cathy have taken it on the last few years, making it better than ever. When I wrote my thoughts on Lightness a couple of months ago, I thought I was going to be ahead of the game this year. But here I am again, posting at the last minute. Happy December!

Lightness by Fanie Demeule, translated by Anita Anand (Linda Leith Publishing)

After reading Mukbang for The Miramichi Reader, I was interested in reading more from this author, and my library happened to have this novella.

Like Mukbang, this book explores themes of alienation and body image.

Let me live a life with no money, no alcohol, no food and no sex. I don't want to be like you.

The narrator of Lightness grows up being very fond of excess, especially when it comes to food.

At recess, I snack on ramen. A guy in grade six tells me I should watch what I eat. It's supposed to be a piece of advice. / It's not to be mean. It's for my good. I'm fat. The sentence doesn't go away. / Some people say that I am "built," or "chubby," or "big-boned." My grandmother prefers to say I look "solid." I wonder: are other people liquid?

When she gets her period and experiences a few nightmarish incidents, her one goal in life becomes finding a way to make the bleeding stop. Given her new thoughts about the way she looks and the distress over her period, we all know where this will lead.

All day I weep in anger and helplessness, against this excessive body, this cunning, vicious body that I begin to loathe and dread. This humiliating stranger. This diving bell in which I'm trapped, buried alive.

Told in short, vignette-style sections, Demeule gets deep into the head of the narrator, showing the thoughts and distress of a woman who feels trapped inside a body she can't control, but tries her very best to.

In my head, as in my stomach, a void expands, a void that feels calming and delectable. Nothing bothers me anymore. All my desires die at the same time as my hunger. A great sense of peace begins to take their place. Everything becomes simpler.

A month of purification. My brain calms down, but stays alert. I begin to be alone with my mind. Like an ebbing tide, the noise of the world grows farther and farther away, muted. I go deep into a cave I no longer wish to leave.

My family takes a trip to the seaside. I stay in the suburbs to work. My parents leave me alone with myself, locked up with an ogress who claws at the fridge, hesitating between emptying it and destroying it. / Eat well, my mother told me. This phrase alone makes me lose my appetite. I know I'll vacillate between paradise and hell, between my dream of having the freedom of eating nothing, of filling myself up on dense sunshine and cool water, and my nightmare of no longer having anyone there to force me to ingest any food whatsoever. / I put the entire contents of both the fridge and the cupboard into a garbage can, then burst into sobs as I hear the garbage truck go by.

The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir by Joseph Auguste Merasty with David Carpenter (University of Regina Press)

This is a tiny little book that can be read in one sitting, even for me. A perfect example of 'small, but mighty'.

Augie Merasty was 86 years old when this book was published in 2017. Augie attended St. Therese Residential School starting at the age of five--from 1935 to 1945--in Sturgeon Lake, Saskatchewan. He and his fellow students received terrible treatment at the school that scarred them for life. Augie has battled alcoholism his entire life, and its reoccurrence is one of the setbacks he has during his time working with David Carpenter. Despite the obstacles, and the pain of revisiting the traumatic memories of his years at Residential school, he was determined to tell his story.

(Interestingly, I recently listened to Tomson Highway's Memoir, Permanent Astonishment. In it, he mentions many of the same places in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The St. Therese Residential School burned down in 1952 (7 years after Augie left) and the children were sent to The Pas, Manitoba. In 1958, Tomson Highway began attending the new school near The Pas at Clearwater Lake at the age of seven.)

It may have taken Augie Merasty decades to tell his story, but somehow that makes it all the more remarkable. It also comes at a time when much of the country is finally ready to listen. A valuable addition to the body of work that has been written about Canada's Residential Schools.

Foster by Claire Keegan

Many of you will be familiar with this one. Because of all the good things I've heard, I was determined to read a Claire Keegan novella this year. And it was lovely. I loved the relationship the girl had with her relatives, and was kind of hoping her parents would let her stay forever.

"This one is no trouble... It's only missing her I'll be when she is gone."

Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won't have to feel this.

"You don't ever have to say anything...Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many's the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing."

Dry Weetabix for your complexion? Has anyone ever heard of this before? (I'll not be trying it.)