Through Black Spruce
Joseph Boyden
Penguin Group 2008
The book I just finished for my friends book recommend project was
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden. I COMPLETELY loved this book. It was emotional, intelligent and dealt with some very pertinent Canadian issues.
The setting of the book was mostly in Moose River, Ontario, during the middle of winter. The feeling of the novel was desolate, lonely and incredibly beautiful. I don't know how many people get to experience northern Canada in the winter, it is really nothing that can be very well described, although the tone of the book does a pretty good job of conveying the feeling.
This book review by Mark Callanan describes the plot of the book very well-
"Early on in Through Black Spruce, the follow-up to Joseph Boyden’s bestselling first novel, Three Day Road, former bush pilot Will Bird reflects on a recurring dream he used to have some 30 years ago. In his dream, Will climbs the wall of the residential school near Moosonee, Ontario, “like Ahepik, our own Cree Spider-Man” to rescue the native children who’ve been taken from their parents and effectively imprisoned there. Not only does the image resonate with Canada’s recent – not to mention long-awaited – public display of remorse over past treatment of First Nations peoples, its implications are scattered like ash through the whole of the novel. There is no explicit reference made to the psychic trauma born of physical and sexual abuse, only the evidence of conflagration, only aftermath.
The death of traditional ways of life is a running theme here. As Will’s niece Annie (the book’s other narrator) points out, the Cree inhabitants of their area have “gone from living on the land … hunting, trapping, trading in order to survive, to living in clapboard houses and pushing squeaky grocery carts up and down aisles filled with overpriced and unhealthy food.” They have, in terms of a colonial mindset, become “civilized.”
Beyond such insidious decline, the community of Moosonee is plagued with drug problems. The Netmakers, a local family, bring cocaine and crystal meth into town using their underworld connections. At the outset of the novel, Annie’s younger sister Suzanne has run off with Gus, youngest of the Netmakers clan; having established herself as a model in New York City, she has since disappeared.
Annie’s quest to find her lost sister is a further study in cultural politics, and on the level of the individual, a study of the formation of identity. As Annie finds herself shedding her tomboy past and slipping into her sister’s role of “Indian Princess” in New York, her uncle grapples with the Wendigo of memory that threatens to consume him."
This book dealt with so many real issues that affect Canadian aboriginals today. The displacement of Native American children through residential schools, the loss of certain ways of life and assimilation into western culture, and the issues of suicide, violence and drugs. The thing that I loved so much about this book though, was not only how realistically I feel these things were dealt with, but the ability of the characters to move though these issues and come to point of resolution.
Mark Callanan stated in his book review that he thought the finale was "disappointing" compared to the action that happened in the book. I feel however, that Boyden dealt with the resolution in a very realistic way. Instead of having a giant magical solution to solve the problems of the community, the ending is merely the characters in the novel, while still injured and broken, coming back together at as a family to do something that connects them back to the land and each other. I feel that Boyden knew that there could be no true resolve, only a moving forward.
Although the feeling of the novel for me was very desolate, it also had a very definite sense of community and connection to the land. I love these photos by Jessica Tremp because to me they portray the connection with nature and the land that I felt in this book.
At one point in the novel a protagonist makes friends with an old bear, and his relationship with it is really beautiful until some of the other men in the community kill it and string it up in a tree.
"I would feed that bear every night, and I would make friends with it. I'd give it something it had never been offered before: the assurance of a daily meal. National Geographic and Animal Planet say no, no, no. Fuck them. What do they know of elders scraping by each day and starving? Do they have so few teeth in their mouths that they can no longer snap bones with their own jaws? Are they forced to live near a dump and go through the dirty diaper and broken tables and refuse of humanity trying to find the scraps that are left to them? My bear, my sow, you would eat. You'd eat well."
-Page 85
These couple of photos by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison give me the same feeling of how the violence was treated in the book, a little distant, and very much a way of life when people are driven to desperation.
"You get into a rut over the years. You learn to find a routine that gets you through the days. You start looking at the day-to day and forget the bigger world around you outside your own head. Before you know it, one, five, ten years have passed. You keep waiting for something, and then one day you wake up and realize. It is simply the end that you're waiting for. Lisette told me that this is what those TV people call depression. Drinking kept me from it, and drinking is what dug my rut deeper. But know I know what I couldn't see then.
The baseball bat attached to the arm that swung it at me on Quarry Road hit me hard enough that my kneecap popped out, and I tore enough tendons that the same doctor in Moose Factory said I wouldn't walk normal, never mind run, anymore. Anymore. But you know what was good about this my nieces? Marius Netmaker was the one to get me out of my rut."
-Page 116
These photographs by Stephen Beadles, some of their references towards water and light, which were reoccurring themes in the book, one of the protagonists continually thinking about allowing the water to have him so he can join the voices of his ancestors.
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenbeadles/
Also this one image by Susan Clarahan which I love, really gives me that feeling of the Canadian north, the consumption and connection with nature, and become absorbed by it.
I loved this novel. It is definitely something that I would recommend to anyone interested in these types of issues, or even anyone Canadian. Poetic, touching, and dealing with intense issues in a sensitive and realistic way, I think that Boyden really found a voice of our time that is worth listening to.
Other novels in this vien that I loved and would recommend would be, Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe by George Ryga, and Late Nights on Air by Elisabeth Hay.
Also, this podcast from Ideas CBC radio reminded me of this book in its northern, secluded, dealing with yourself in nature type of way.
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