I've been so busy with arts & crafts and reinventing new ways to be self-sufficient that this is, somehow, the only book I've completed this summer. This leaves me, essentially - on a ratio - one book behind on a three-year goal. I'm not too concerned. Books to me are an escapism that make waiting in transit possible (of which I've done little this summer, with zero international travel), that make quiet evenings possible, that make lunch breaks on bad days tolerable. Etc. Etc. Etc. I'll get there. I've been content in my own head these days. This is something for which I am grateful.
Anyway.
When first I spoke about reasserting my Métis identity a few years back, a colleague said: "You should read Three Day Road." I continued to hear about Joseph Boyden at many conferences since this recommendation, and started reading more about him and his literature. I almost picked up The Orenda, until I realized it was a continuation in a series that began with Three Day Road. I then decided to log the latter on an ongoing "To Read" list. I was fortunate enough to be awarded a $200 Indigo gift card some time back from a contest held by my union (one of many reasons I am indebted to my union!), and sat there at my computer screen with my "To Read" list in hand, picking off books. This was obviously one.
Now, at almost 400 pages of tiny text and brutal war descriptions, this is no light book. I'd recommend it on my 2D multicultural list to only the very mature readers. It could be a great pairing for a 4U ISU. Near the end of the book, the protagonist ruminates: “We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the one facing what we do to the enemy.” This is the odd and exclusive reason I appreciate war texts, for this is what they illustrate about the human condition.
There is so much foreshadowing that I anticipated the ending well before the midpoint of the text as the only logical meeting point of the two parallel narratives. This kept making me wonder if perhaps I would be shockingly mistaken, or if I was meant to sadly anticipate the way in which it would all go down, so to speak, and simply wait for how. I think if the latter were possible, it didn't even take away anything from the narrative to me: just spoke of the brutal degradation of humanity in such a scenario. I kept reminiscing about this class I took in university called Literary Non-Fiction, in which we read - amongst many other texts - Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Of course we knew the inevitable ending. This was real. We were only waiting. (This called up all sorts of ethical questions with regard to ourselves as readers that I have always loathed having to face, but that's sort of an aside.) My professor asked: "What is the purpose of a parallel structure?" I raised my hand, and was selected: "At some point, they have to meet."
The structure here is a little different, as it floats through space and time within both narratives - told more in flashbacks than in present tense. However, unlike any postmodern text, this is entirely fluid and never disorienting.
Boyden is a beautiful writer. I do want to read the others in the series.
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