Library Limelights 251

 

Ashley Audrain. The Push. Ebook download from TPL. Toronto: Viking Canada/Penguin, 2021.

The novelty of motherhood and mothering can often be a steep learning curve, but with Blythe’s history, she has a double handicap. Her own mother, Cecilia, abandoned her before she was a teenager. And Cecilia’s very disturbed mother, Etta, had rejected Cecilia almost from birth. Blythe has kept this family information—what little she’s been told or remembers―from her husband, Fox, in an otherwise happy young marriage. Then: pregnancy, accompanied by doubts and fears that she also conceals. In the actual birth process, Blythe fights not to deliver the baby. Baby Violet. Naturally, their former routines and lives get upended by a child.

Blythe resents her new baby-centric days but realizes that her lack of connection is mutual on Violet’s part. From infancy, Violet is attached to Fox; the child spurns her mother at every opportunity even as Fox is oblivious to it. As she grows, Violet reveals only to Blythe her wish to be rid of her mother. Does she suffer subconsciously from birth trauma? And still, Blythe tries. Carefully inserted vignettes of Cecilia growing up, of Blythe growing up, paint forlorn childhoods. Blythe hadn’t wanted that for her daughter. Her next baby is a boy, Sam, with whom she has a healthy, joyous relationship. Until he dies, aged four. The marriage fractures; Fox moves on. Blythe is left with obsessive grief and the suspicions only she can see. Author Audrain presents us with a bruising study of three generations of failed mothers. None failed in the same way or for the same reasons. A beautifully crafted novel, it’s exhausting.

Bits and Pieces

▪ No couple can imagine what their relationship will be like after having children. But there’s an expectation that you’ll be in it together. (72)

Blythe

▪ I would be everything my own mother was not. (32)

▪ Why did I think I would be any different than the mother I came from? (63)

▪ I was desperate to know who she was before she became my mother. (66)

▪ You used to care about me as a person—my happiness, the things that made me thrive. Now I was a service provider. (74)

▪ I couldn’t tell you the truth: that I believed there was something wrong with our daughter. You thought the problem was me. (98)

▪ If I focused just enough Sam could be right there next to me, and I could feel alive again. (271)

▪ Crafting the narrative around Sam was addictive—I cycled through storylines obsessively, thinking about what he’d be like and how I would care for him if he was alive. (285-6)

Cecilia

▪ “Blythe, the women in this family, we’re different. You’ll see.” (141)

▪ “Nice to see you,” she said, as though we’d run into each other at the grocery store. (274)

▪ Every part of her that I’d once known had become glossy and coated and smelled like a department store. (275)

Etta

▪ Cecilia could hear Etta’s thick breathing behind her. She could feel Etta’s rage tickling her spine. (90)

Maha Gargash. The Sand Fish. USA: HarperCollins, 2009.

This, too, is about women and their assigned roles. Noora lives in the Hararees mountains of what is now the United Arab Emirates; to the north is the Persian Gulf. She has lived like a tomboy most of her isolated life since her mother died and her father became demented. But her older brother Sager has traditional plans for her. After seeking out Zobaida, a seer-like healer, to help their father, Noora stays in the village to care for her aunt and avoid her brother. No one knows that Noora is clandestinely meeting a charismatic village man, Rashid—their budding plans all for naught when she learns he is promised to another woman. Meanwhile, Sager has able to arrange a marriage for her as the third wife of a wealthy pearl merchant. Matchmakers are dispatched to prepare her. Feeling twice betrayed, Noora submits to her fate.

Noora’s new home is in a gulf coast town of the 1950s with husband Jassem who is anxious to have a child. Neither his first wife, Lateefa, nor his second, Shamsa, became pregnant. Therefore all expectant eyes are on Noora who deeply misses her formerly carefree existence. Lateefa has an opaque agenda and Shamsa is overtly spiteful at losing her favoured position. The noisy slave girl Yaqoota and general factotum Hamad round out the household. In the summer when the coast is unbearable with heat and humidity, the women move to the drier desert but Noora chafes in her enforced life. More than one secret plan is hatched to alter their household numbers; the reader will see what’s coming before Noora does. Jassem’s comparative wealth has been based on the famed local pearl industry, but he is on the cusp of the oil discoveries that will change much of the region. As we visit this household in The Sand Fish, our understanding of Arab culture expands.

One-liners

▪ “They should have married her off when her mind wasn’t formed yet,” Gulsom said. (8)

▪ “So helpless, life hasn’t been kind to him, giving him a tongue that moves without purpose and ears that can’t catch the sound of the wind.” (68)

▪ Rashid had broken his promise to marry Aisha, but did she want him at the expense of another? (110)

▪ Covering her dress was the silk bridal thoub, a transparent bottle green, festooned with a splash of silver embroidery, and on her head sat her shayla and the abaya body cover. (123)

▪ There they were: a handful of pearls in his thieving hand. (294)

▪ “You’ll be giving Jassem his most desired dream, and he will always be grateful to you, as will I.” (331)

Multi-liners

▪ “You see? I can’t even talk to you,” he said. “You look a mess. You don’t even comb your hair in the morning. You’re like a savage that fell in mud.” (18)

▪ “How could you go and plan my life behind my back?” she yelled, punching her anger into the air with her fists. “You are so easy to fool. That witch played with your head, and you let her. All she wants is money. Don’t you see?” (118-9)

▪ Where was she going? Somewhere uncertain, somewhere faraway. Sager had described it differently. “Somewhere better,” he had said, “where you will live like a princess.” (120)

▪ This time Yaqoota did not laugh. Instead, she looked deep into Noora’s eyes. “Don’t you know? Your duty is to make a baby.” (163)

▪ “I don’t want to answer to anyone, brother Hamad. I don’t want to be afraid,” she told him one afternoon. (230)

Matchmakers invade

“You’re a lucky girl. You got yourself a rich man. Be thankful.”

“Yes,” Sakina confirmed. “Thankful.”

The sisters continued to instill in Noora the necessity of modesty of her sex and the timidity that comes with poverty. Their voices thickened with every word as they wove their conjugal web of restraint, until Noora felt they had shred any strand of hope that lay hidden in her heart.

The matchmakers were entering her life with the force of a spiralling dust storm, leaving behind only the taste of grit in her mouth. And she had to swallow it. Now, as they rose to leave, Noora wondered what had happened to the eagle in her. When had the frail chick staggered to take its place? (8)

Daring indiscretion

She sat down, and, clasping her knees, waited, keeping watch over the goat as it tugged at a sumptuous fountain of grass growing at the base of a palm. Her ribs were beginning to shake with a renewed flood of anxiety.

Why was she following such a dangerous mission? She knew she would be disgraced if she were found out. She began wondering how the villagers might punish her. Would they lock her up? Would they beat her? Or would they simply send her back to her brother, let her carry her shame to her home? Naturally, nothing would happen to Rashid. It was always the woman who bore the humiliation. (82-3)

Domestic life

Lateefa snapped at Yaqoota, “You hold your tongue before I cut it off!” With a force that made her earrings jingle, she grabbed her slipper and hurled it at the slave girl. It slapped Yaqoota’s chin and tumbled off her shoulder. Yaqoota yelped. “And if you continue in this way,” said Lateefa, “I’ll throw you out to wander the nights in Leema. See if you can survive! See if someone doesn’t pick you up and carry you off to the desert. See if you like being someone else’s slave!”

It was a serious threat and Yaqoota’s biggest fear. She had often told Noora of the Bedouins who came from the deep sands to steal other people’s slaves, to sell them somewhere else. Yaqoota was not about to argue. She squeaked and ran out of the room, bumping into Shamsa in the doorway.

“What’s wrong with that silly girl?” said Shama. “Always screeching with that rat voice of hers.” (190)

Ragnar Jónasson. The Girl Who Died. 2018. Ebook download from TPL, St. Martin’s Press ebook, 2021.

The atmosphere beside the Arctic Ocean promises one of those spooky, broody Icelandic novels. In 1985 (no internet, no cell phones) Una accepts a teaching job “at the edge of the world,” a tiny village in Iceland’s most isolated location. Skálar has a population of ten; it exists mainly because of the fish packing plant. Una finds that not everyone agreed they need a teacher or makes her feel welcome. The villagers often seem to be a closed lot, making city girl Una lonely at times. Her two pupils are Edda, daughter of her landlady Salka, and Kólbrun, daughter of a neighbouring couple. Salka’s house provides a supernatural touch, due to a young girl who died there years ago; her ghost is occasionally seen by some. While it’s basically Una’s narrative, a second voice (italics) will interject abruptly, the voice of a woman falsely imprisoned for murder. Also, we get hints of a trauma in Una’s past. None of these events rouse more than mild curiosity in me.

Una is attracted to the sole single male in the village. Thor works the adjacent farm for a woman owner; although he’s friendly, he keeps his distance. When a stranger shows up to spend the night at the farm, Una connects the visitor to the newspaper photo of a missing city man but her curiosity is met with denials. Or does she drink too much, confuse things? Suddenly Edda passes out at the Christmas Eve concert; she dies soon after, cause of death medically unknown, when the pace picks up a bit. But the plot is loose, especially the secondary scenario, leaving an unfinished feeling, and a disappointing ending. It’s too easy to add a paranormal excuse when plotting logic fails. If this book is typical Jónasson, he doesn’t hold a candle to Sigurdardottir or Indridason, unlike some of the hype claims.

Bits

▪ But perhaps this was what she had been yearning for: solitude without loneliness. (19)

▪ “I believe she did you a disservice,” he continued, “by tricking you into coming here.” (69)

▪ Una had sensed, not for the first time, that the other woman took a possessive interest in Thor despite his claim that they were just good friends. (141)

▪ The village was almost permanently wrapped in an all-encompassing hush, a stark reminder of how far away they were from anywhere. And with no urban glow from a nearby town or distant lights of farms, there might as well have been no outside world. (154-5)

▪ Perhaps her stay in this isolated place was having a peculiar effect on her mind, making her prey to delusion and diminishing her ability to think rationally. (196)

▪ Some instinct made Una slide the cutting under an old newspaper that was lying on the kitchen table. (231)

▪ “None of you wanted me here and ... and now it turns out you were all lying to me the whole time.” (304)