Skye Vannan makes for quite a fascinating character. Though not as extreme, she has a bit of the irascibility of Olive Kitteridge. She's born into a wealthy family in Edinburgh, and though she's not a beauty we're told, she could marry well. (As her mother expects her to try--we see how Skye comes by her difficult nature.) Instead she wants to be a veterinarian, still an unusual profession for a woman in Scotland. She marries a Canadian soldier at the end of World War II and moves to rural Ontario (Kincardine) where she becomes the region's vet. Her wealthy family mostly drops her.
Skye's one child, a daughter, dies in a car crash; her daughter's husband, wracked with guilt--he was driving--descends into the alcoholism he was already approaching. Skye is left to raise her two-year old grandson. Duncan shows a preternatural talent for drawing animals.
Can Skye come to terms with her own brusque nature? Can she break the cycle of difficult parents producing difficult children? Those are the questions of the book, and they're well-handled. Though she can't make it work out perfectly in the end, there's a measure of hope for the future with Duncan, though I did feel he was the less interesting character.
The other thing particularly to be said about the book is Jim Nason's astute handling of time. It covers a period of seventy-plus years, and the book moves successfully back and forth in time, revealing as it needs to to move forward, but with mysteries still hidden.
The title, though? It's suitable enough, I guess, with a veterinarian as the main character, and it has particular reference to the veterinary school in Edinburgh she attends. But not particularly appealing, I thought.
Read because I'm poking around in contemporary Canadian literature from small presses, for the Canadian Book Challenge.
Ooo, I like your method. I wonder if you find some really good ones. This one sounds like it's worth a read, but my library doesn't carry it. Sigh! Wow, it only has one rating on Goodreads. It really is obscure!
ReplyDeleteI saw that it had 1 (five-star!) rating on GoodReads. Probably Jim Nason's mom...Still I did enjoy it.
DeleteI read one book from Signature Editions for other reasons & then looked at their website and started getting some from the library to see if I thought the others were good, too. Three so far and really they've all been pretty decent, if no masterpieces.
It's nice that the Toronto Public Library is so good about these things. I've got a couple more from Signature Editions that I may read in the near future. I'd have been a lot more hesitant about getting them if I had to buy them.
For your Can Lit Challenge, have I mentioned Susan Moodie's Roughing It In The Bush or Catherine Parr Traill's The Backwoods of Canada. I've read the later and really enjoyed it. The former book is by her sister and I think more well-known. What I find interesting is the difference between the two personalities … one is a complainer and one is a roll-up-your-shirt-sleeves-and-get-to-it. But I'm not sure if these are obscure enough for you.
DeleteThey don't have to be obscure... ;-)
DeleteI have been interested in reading them because I get the impression there the sort of thing you read in high school here, but I didn't because I wasn't here for high school. But people do seem to know them & I don't!
If you do explore these two writers, you might also enjoy the biography by Charlotte Gray. It adds an interesting layer to the women's experiences and adjustment to life in Canada.
DeleteThanks for that! I will keep the Charlotte Gray in mind.
Deleteour daughter's a vet; it's a tough life, actually: high rate of suicide...
ReplyDeleteI believe it. Certainly Nason doesn't make it seem glamorous here: dirty, physically and emotionally challenging, and without much thanks.
DeleteAnother deep dive in to CanLit! This is what I like about book bloggers, this introduction to books and authors I never would have encountered otherwise. Ten or twenty years ago I could have counted the Canadian authors I knew of on ONE finger (Atwood). Now I know...to be honest maybe only ten...but still a lot more names and I've even read a few. :D
ReplyDeleteTwenty-five years ago (before I moved to Canada) I think I might have used three fingers to count Canadian authors I knew, and I think the only one I'd read was Robertson Davies because my favorite classics teacher liked him. I, too, had heard of Atwood and probably Alice Munro, but nobody else, and hadn't read either of them.
DeleteGetting to know my adoptive homeland...
You know, walking my dogs yesterday I was thinking about this. I could probably list actually 20+. I kept coming up with authors who are Canadian but unlike Atwood aren't KNOWN for being Canadian...like Douglas Coupland and then you have those hybrids like Michael Ondaatje. My dogs know a lot about books because I talk to them about what I am reading or what I am pondering all the time. My neighbors probably think I am a little nutty.
DeleteNow that you mention it I'd probably heard of Douglas Coupland before moving here, but I doubt I knew he was Canadian. He wrote funny pieces in The New Republic when I subscribed in the 80s, but I didn't read one of his books until I got here. I doubt I knew Ondaatje. (Not until the movie, I'm pretty sure.)
DeleteHowever, I did know that Neil Young & Joni Mitchell were Canadian from an early age...not to mention most of the Band...
It's the cats around here who get hear my muttering about books, and perhaps learn from it, but since they're indoor cats, the neighbors have to be peering in the window to see the signs of madness...
The fact that the best song about the U.S. Civil War is written by a Canadian has always tickled me.
DeleteDon't get me started on Canadian actors...THEY'RE EVERYWHERE...William Shatner, Michael J. Fox, Pam Anderson...I'll have a little chat with my dogs about the rest of them. :D
I've enjoyed his poetry but, strangely enough, I've never read his fiction. Which is strange, because that usually travels the other way with me (ignoring the poetry and beginning with the prose). I've never read anything that I didn't like from Signature Books - they seem to steadily produce good work. Another I enjoy, along the same vein, is Great Plains Publications. Good assortment overall. Enjoy your meanderings!
ReplyDeleteI knew he was also a poet, but I haven't read any of his poetry, nor for that matter any of his other novels. I would certainly cheerfully read both again--especially as you recommend the poetry.
DeleteThis is the third from Signature Editions I've read I think & I've definitely had good luck with them--all three quite impressive. I've got a couple of others from the library at home at the moment as well. Great Plains Publications is new to me--I'll have to check them out. Thanks!