Fugitive Pieces

Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels

I've started, tried to get into this book at least three times but I've abandoned it each time. I couldn't keep the characters straight, and couldn't follow the time line. Since then, I have watched a film version, which will help, and I've also read Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird and Elie Wiesel's Night, which seem to me to be somehow related. Perhaps when I've finished my writing revisions and my current paperback, another Kathy Reichs, I'll give this one another try. Maybe not, if I can't get this Human Writes Activist blog to post again.

What We All Long For - FIRST IMPRESSIONS

What We All Long For - FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I finished Dionne Brand's What We All Long For because it is an AI book club selection. I would not call it easy reading. It took a while to hook my interest in these second-generation immigrant young people trying to make lives for themselves in Toronto in 2002. Carla, the daughter holding the baby witnessing her mother's suicide; Tuyen The artist and Binh the MBA, the two BIC children raised by parents haunted by a lost child; Jackie, the daughter of hippy parents mourning the loss of dancehalls and the good old days; Oku, the poet drop-out obsessing about the same girl since high school; and Quy, the lost boy, remembering how he survived. I think my “suspension of disbelief” is hindered by the unconvincing characterization. With the possible exception of philosophy majors, I don't think people think in such abstractions. Nor are most 20-somethings thatself-aware. I can accept that the omniscient narrator, the poet/writer Bran, understands the emotional underpinnings of these characters. But I have trouble believing the characters. 

Is the plot thick enough to support the growth, the transformation of each character, as believable? They do grow, and that's a good thing. 

I don't have a problem with the coincidences or with the ending. One of the themes is the role of chance in our lives. A novel is by definition a contrivance. The structure of this novel is varied points of view leading to a final crash which brings all the plot threads together, like the movie.

The reviews of this novel sound very snarky. Beautifully disappointing. Political. Well-intentioned. Predictable sex scene. Soap-opera-ish. Race-based alienation. These all sound reductive to me.

What We All Long For - CANLIT THEMES:- The Same But Different

What We All Long For - CANLIT THEMES:

1) The-Same-But-Different traumas of all the migrants. Whether they came by train from

Halifax, or flew in from Jamaica, or arrived as refugees from camps in Thailand, these

people have baggage. All people have baggage. But, as I said, I am not convinced that twenty-somethings would

understand either themselves or their parents in this way. 

What We All Long For – CanLit THEMES - Coming-Of-Age

What We All Long For – CanLit THEMES

2) Coming-of-Age. Personally, I am old, and I have promised myself that I've read enough

coming-of-age novels of teens discovering sex and rejecting their parents. I no longer identify

with them. They are going through a stage. Been there. Did that. Learned something. Need to

learn more about older adults. Thus, where I am in my life impacts my response to the characters and the plot.  

What We All Long For – CanLit THEMES - The Immigrant Experience

What We All Long For – CanLit THEMES

3) The Immigrant Experience. I am pretty familiar with the first generation immigrant stories of

new Canadians as presented in CanLit. It is interesting to peek into the lives of the next generation, but I cannot say that anything surprised me or seemed to be a revelation. We are all individuals, from often confused families, and from other places before we got here. We all struggle to figure out what's going on and how we can best fit in. For some, those families or places of origin were more of a hardship than for others. Some had a choice and others had immigration thrust upon them. No one ever asks Where else would I rather be?

What We All Long For – CanLit THEMES - Becoming the Ideal Canadian

What We All Long For – CanLit THEMES

4) The Ideal Canadian: I kept thinking, these new people could benefit from more of a helping

hand, more of a feeling of being welcomed here. It might be useful for them to learn about

those who are already here, how they did it, how they broke out of the silos and interacted,

participated. Those already here could extend a hand of welcome with language, and social interactions, and schools, and employment, and patronage of businesses. We are all immigrants. Most of us whose families chose to come here arrived as "economic immigrants/migrants," poor people without hope of owning land in the old country, of breaking through the old class structures, seeking the freedom to be the best they can possibly be. Just like today's immigrants. For some, war and dislocation were the impetus for migrating. For others, not as much. All came with the knowledge that they have to work hard, and hoped to vaccinate their children with that knowledge too. Only Jackie seems to have picked up that lesson, of what she has to do to survive in a capitalist system. And Binh.

What We All Long For – CanLit THEMES - The City

What We All Long For – CanLit THEMES

5) Toronto as a character in the novel: Everyone hates Toronto. Its size implies dominance. Its lack of interest in anywhere else, smugness, can seem off-putting. I'm not that familiar with Toronto, having visited only twice, and not knowing the geography. The last time I was there, I never got over the feeling that the lake was on the wrong side of the street. Perhaps because of this, I envy Carla's familiarity, her fearless flying through the streets on her courier bicycle.