Katherena Vermette. The Strangers. Canada: Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2021.
If you are a teenager having a baby, with your maternal line having done much the same, chances are good that you have multiple generations of family existing at the same time—which is what happens here. The Strangers: a Métis cum Native family living in Winnipeg at the low end of the social scale. The matriarch Annie, aka Mamère, had a big old brown house where they all coexisted for some time. But Annie dies and her children, including Margaret, sell the house. That means the scattering of various siblings, children, and grandchildren, the loosening of some ties. When young, Margaret almost made it out of the racist, demeaning, disheartening environment with her acceptance to law school; but pregnancy changed everything. Now she is Margaret the martyr, grudgingly looking after the others, her years of disappointment and resentment overriding feelings of affection.
Although we hear mainly from Margaret, her daughter Elsie, and Elsie’s two daughters Phoenix and Cedar-Sage, an intimate portrait of the entire extended family life emerges. Elsie lurches between addiction and detox and pregnancies, losing her girls to the foster system. Phoenix is often an angry ball of rage, lately receiving healing treatment while pregnant in prison. Cedar’s father Shawn, finally settled in a good marriage, brings Cedar to live with them and a new step-sister. Five years of time with flashbacks are smoothly integrated as the Strangers cycle through struggles, alienation, acceptance, determination ... enabling or mentoring amongst themselves. Kids having kids. Love for babies. Learning to verbalize their stories. Author Vermette again demonstrates her profound ability to immerse us in a diverse section of humanity, capturing their often inarticulate emotions and thoughts. These people are us.
Annie
▪ “That’s how we lived, with family around. People these days don’t know, don’t remember. That’s why they’re lonely.” (314)
▪ Annie never took her anger out on the world, only herself. (322)
Margaret
▪ Margaret dreamt of silence and aloneness, and times spent without a thing to do or clean or cook. (117)
▪ That is what Margaret did. Yelled at people. Mostly at Elsie. (306)
▪ But as she got older, it seemed only Indians, Métis, who had sorrow built into their bones, who exchanged despair as ordinarily as recipes, who had devastation after devastation after dismissal after denial woven into their skin. As if sad stories were the only heirloom they had to pass on. (316)
Elsie
▪ Thing is, the pain was still waiting for her when she cleaned up. (114)
▪ Back to Uncle Toby. His couch that is the only home she’s really had since her kids got taken away almost nine years ago. (178)
▪ “Elsie, you’re a grown woman. It’s time you started acting like one.” (262)
▪ Tries to remember how hard it was to get clean. How the highs never seem to last. (303)
Phoenix
▪ It’s the first time she has touched anyone, besides a fight or being restrained or some shit, in fucking years. (152)
▪ Everyone knew where she was, that was the thing. If they wanted to, they could try and come see her, but no one ever did. (270)
▪ “You signed him over. On the day he was born you signed over your rights.” (273)
▪ A quick prick to her shoulder and she thinks, Oh fuck no, and maybe she screams it too. Starts thrashing again, as long as she can. (277)
Cedar
▪ “You are the best of us, you know?” she’d always say before she said goodbye. (38)
▪ I hadn’t yet learned how invisible I am. Always am. (158)
▪ I don’t want to just be given something everyone gets after I’ve worked this hard to get something better. (281)
▪ “It’s this old teaching that everything that’s happened to your ancestors, everything they know, good or bad, is already in you. It’s in your blood.” (285)
After the morning rush
Her skin seemed to pucker every morning as she made her ungrateful sons and husband their eggs and toast, and finally in the nearly quiet, with everyone but her mother on their way, she could work out her wrinkles. She relaxed her mouth from its intense line and drooped her eyes so her forehead could flatten out. She dried her hands, then gently touched her face, massaged her forehead smooth and pulled her cheeks up and out to her ears. She had read somewhere that this helped, this pushing back of her face, as if that could stop time and all the pain that rested there. (121-2)
Elly Griffiths. The Janus Stone. Ebook download from TPL. Canada: McClelland & Stewart, 2009.
Change of pace to Janus, the Roman god who looks both forward and back. Dr Ruth Galloway gets involved in investigating another set of old bones—her specialty―as per a decapitated child. The remains are not from the Roman or earlier period, when they might have been considered a type of ritual sacrifice. DCI Harry Nelson comes onto the case, hunting for a more recently missing child as it turns out. Nelson’s presence reminds us of his and Ruth’s passionate one-night stand in The Crossing Places (LL268). Surprise, surprise: Ruth is pregnant and seems to be equally thrilled and embarrassed, reluctant to publicly acknowledge the fact. She drags her feet about informing Nelson until circumstances force the discussion. She wants nothing from him but understanding; it’s up in the air whether he will tell his wife Michelle.
The location of the child’s bones was under a Norwich mansion being demolished as new construction rises around it. The skull was in a sealed-up old well. Before being abandoned, the building had been a Catholic children’s home; before that, it had been the residence of the wealthy Spens family. It’s Edward Spens who is financing the new building project. The archaeologists on scene, including Ruth, Irish Ted, and Max Grey, muse about ancient burial practices while Nelson and team pursue former residents and staff of the orphanage. Alas, the body could be one of no less than three little girls who either died or went missing in the appropriate period. A variety of myths and legends add to the mystery of identity and motivation. As many fans will agree, Griffiths has the perfect touch in the relationship between Ruth and Nelson, ensuring a lively series. I find their iconoclasm very refreshing.
Bits
▪ She hasn’t lost any weight though and he realizes that he would have been rather disappointed if she had. (11)
▪ “You don’t need to be married to have a baby,” she says. (27)
▪ She remembers Max’s talk of head rituals in Celtic mythology. The Celts were head hunters. (46)
▪ “If I have to hear once more that Father Hennessey is a saint who walks on water in his spare time, I’m going to go mad,” says Nelson as they walk away from the trench. (90)
▪ If you sacrifice correctly, the past is wiped out and made clean. (94)
▪ “But why” ‒ Ruth’s voice is rising – “would anyone write my name on a wall in blood?” (143)
▪ “He’s not just the god of doorways but of any time of transition and change, of progression from one condition to another.” (204-5)
▪ On Ruth’s doorstep is a dead calf. A black calf. A calf with two heads. (225)
▪ “The evil in that house began long before I ever saw it.” (259)
▪ He is staring at a six-word text message: I’m going to kill your daughter. (285)
Michael Harvey. We All Fall Down. USA: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
I enjoyed Harvey’s previous book (The Third Rail, LL260) featuring former cop, now private eye, Michael Kelly. Because I liked Kelly’s character—smart, principled, and insouciant at critical moments. This book continues on, referring to a sinister problem within Chicago’s transportation system (the details of which I don’t recall and which are not spelled out for the reader). But it partially revolves around illegal drugs and vicious street gangs—not to my taste―and corrupt officials, while a mini-doomsday seems to be looming, or underway, or living in a science lab. The plot leapfrogs like lightning from one inscrutable action or dialogue to another.
I read the whole damn thing and had no idea what was going on 95% of the time.
Here are the key figures besides Kelly ...
His girlfriend Rachel, a judge; a bent cop, Quin; an undercover cop Rodriguez; journalist Rita Alvarez; Jae Lee, Korean shop owner; Marcus, a damaged kid; Ray Ray, a gang leader; Matthew Danielson, secret agent; Ellen Brazile, a biochemical researcher; her boss Jon Stoddard; her colleague Molly Carrollton; Chicago’s Mayor Wilson; his smeechy chief of staff Mark Rissman; crime boss Vinny DeLuca and his henchmen; James Doll, another secret agent; mystery man in long coat with a rifle.
Here are some key words and phrases ...
Subway light bulbs; anthrax; homeless; 10,000 body bags; Homeland Security; black biology; police-held drugs evidence; Camp Chicago; pathogen; hazmat gear; guns; Cook County Hospital.
Cryptic is one word that applies ... who is doing some killing? Why will Kelly get blamed? Is anyone honest? Brilliantly played novel? Or lost in a doomsday fog? Yet the writing style is somehow magnetic, the plot races, and I wanted the Thucydides-citing Kelly to survive. Make of it what you will. Perhaps some quotes will enlighten?
One-liners
▪ Everyone and his brother had a camera shoved up their ass these days, and Donnie didn’t need any of that shit. (15)
▪ Quin stepped away from the car and thought about the different ways he might shoot his new boss in the face. (46)
▪ “We’re constantly loading DNA sequences into our databanks, crunching base pairs and generating models of new pathogens that might be created in a rogue lab.” (62)
▪ I could read the DNA of a killer in his smile. (83)
▪ “Then why were you screaming in your sleep?” (113)
▪ Ray Ray brought the concrete down in one solid chunk, crushing the ring and pinkie fingers. (149)
▪ Sleep crawled across her face. (237)
▪ “Keep talking and I won’t half mind shooting you myself.” (285)
Multi-liners
▪ “Listen, you need to back off this thing. At least until we can talk to DeLuca.” (72)
▪ From where he sat, Marcus thought the man couldn’t see him. Until the man brought the rifle up to his shoulder and pulled back on the trigger. (78)
▪ “The pathogen lies dormant in the body until it’s triggered by some external event. Like the herpes virus is triggered by stress.” (111)
▪ “My moms bought you an hour. Too bad she ain’t got enough in the till to buy your life.” (88)
▪ “Anyone in an ER is at grave risk.” (112)
▪ I tore out a blank page, scribbled down a few words, and left the note where she could see it. Right beside her gun. (239)
▪ “So four months ago, we infected almost a quarter million people in the Bay Area with a biological weapon. We call it the Dweller.” (285)
A new leader?
“Still gonna have to kill you,” Marcus said.
“Why?”
“Why kill you?”
I nodded toward Cecil. “Why him?”
“Promise I made to myself. Besides, it’s gonna be you that did the shooting. Me and James just gonna be heroes. But first, we goin’ down and grab those boxes.”
“You killed Lee.”
“Me and Lee in business together. Ray Ray was gonna put Lee out of the business. I came down to get my share this afternoon. Before Ray Ray got his.” (90-1)
Blue Line transit
I nodded to the front of the car. “Can I take a look?”
“Just don’t try to open anything.”
I got up and took a peek around the plastic curtain. Through the connecting door I could see a dozen bodies in bags, stacked on the floor and across flat boards laid over the seats. Watching over the silent commuters were a couple of morgue assistants, suited up in case Molly’s theory proved to be awry and the dead turned out to be contagious. (172)
Gangs Away
They’d seen all the choppers. Heard about the fences. Some fools wanted to hit the streets. Some already had. But Ray Ray held the Fours in his fist. Wouldn’t let them off the chain. Until now. He told his crew what needed to be done. Then Ray Ray flipped open the boxes. In one were the shotguns. In the other, gas masks. They had five hours until sunup. And an entire neighbourhood to burn. (169)
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