“Sadi’s Dragons”
By Beverley Brenna
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$16.95
ISBN 978-1-77187-296-6
Some authors always “deliver the goods” when it comes to arresting plots, compelling characters, and technical proficiency. Saskatchewan’s Beverley Brenna—a Governor General’s Literary Award nominee, author of numerous books for young people, professor emerita at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Education, editor, and visual artist—is one of those consistently reliable writers, and her new middle years’ novel, Sadi’s Dragons, is another grand success. Brenna books are not only entertaining, they also feel important, and her latest is no exception.
The intergenerational novel deals with serious issues: poverty and the unhomed; a fatal boating accident (and the fallout for eleven-year-old protagonist, Sadi, and her struggling mother); dementia; abuse; and lies. It also positions storytelling, art-making and forging new friendships as integral to the characters’ healing. In short, this is no ordinary juvenile novel with goofy characters, puppy love and slapstick humour … it’s far more layered and impressive, and it credits young readers with having both the interest and the ability to digest more complex plots and realistic, contemporary issues.
We meet Sadi when she’s been alone for five days and living in a tent near a river while her mother has “gone back to the city.” Food is sometimes found in garbage cans, washing is done in the river or—as October’s blowing in—a shopping mall bathroom. We know that Sadi has buried a tragic secret and the imaginative young girl tries to keep it locked up in her “memory box.” Also, as a result of the boating accident that killed her beloved father and twin brother, she’s suffered a brain injury.
Sadi’s chapters alternate with those of Marguerite, a senior artist challenged by dementia. Never-married Marguerite lives quietly with her dog (whose name she can’t recall, and whom she sometimes forgets to feed). She hasn’t painted in a year, and her gallerist is pressuring her for new work. She has no friends, often naps out of boredom (“Because if she was sleeping, she didn’t have to think about anything”), and is so frustrated with her memory loss she’s been throwing items—including canvases and paint supplies—into her back yard.
Brenna skillfully sets tone with the increasingly poor weather, and by using the colour grey. The dog is “like a small grey shadow,” Marguerite’s room is grey, and a day is described as “grey.” Sadi thinks that the river looks “like a long silver dress,” and even though she has an acquired brain injury, she’s always pondering, and comes up with ideas like putting calculators on shopping carts so “you’d know just how much you were spending.”
As much as Sadi is trying not to remember, Marguerite is desperate to remember, and asks herself: “What if I forget who I am?” I won’t reveal how Brenna masterfully connects the girl and the artist—the former fearing foster care, the latter fearing a care home—or what dragons have to do with it. I encourage you to buy the book, and enjoy finding out for yourself.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
“Apron Apocalypse”
Written by Jeanette Lynes
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.95
ISBN 978-1-77187-294-2
I’ve previously admired Jeanette Lynes’ poetry and fiction, but with her latest book—Apron Apocalypse, an intimate yet highly-accessible collection of lyric essays—the Ontario-born, Saskatoon-based Lynes hoists an already high bar, and clears it. Lynes is well-known for her numerous books; as the Coordinator of the M.F.A. in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan; and for her wit and wardrobe. Her work—frequently surprising, tight, and always entertaining—has given her a national literary presence. Wikipedia page? Absolutely.
Apron Apocalypse is smart, candid, stylish and illuminating—a book I’ll be recommending to anyone who loves the hybridity (poetic prose and real-life experience) of lyric essays, and will appreciate how Lynes has imaginatively harnessed her joys, failures and obsessions. She writes extensively about her failed marriage and “divorce trauma,” and self-forgiveness is a theme. She also examines—with linguistic precision—her rural upbringing (sans hot water); paintings (ie: Mary Pratt’s work), poetry (especially Elizabeth Bishop), music and movies (hurray for Sarah Polley!); aprons (she had a collection, but “Pretty aprons couldn’t rescue us all”); mental health; COVID’s toll; etymology (she makes it fun); her own height (“I’m the grain elevator to lots of folks’ woodsheds”) and physical features; and the many rooms, real and metaphorical, that’ve harboured her as she’s moved across the map.
Her prose is saturated with poetry. On the Isle of Mull, “decayed trunks shagged with moss form a sculpture gallery,” she writes, and in wintery Saskatoon, “sunlight will stroke in brief punches, bracing bouts of glare with windchill blasts that bitch-slap one’s cheekbones.” In her “marital house by the shore, a pretty/bungalow with pink siding,/the apron on its hook, hung, like a headless woman.” Lynes “wanted to be a writer more than a wife.” (Ditto.)
As a writer and professor, Lynes also writes about writing, and how “During the plague, [her] syntax took a beating. Prose barely clung to the page, kept peeling away from its margins.” She maligns “the hard c,” calling it her “least-loved sound,” and “never cared for the ellipsis,” though “suspect[s] it’s wrong, being prejudiced against certain elements of punctuation.”
One of the strongest essays is the tragicomedy “Sea Cow,” about trying to have a fun holiday in Florida while her “marriage [was] unravelling,” and her efforts “not to be a cow” on the disastrous vacation.
“A lot of one’s life is finding the words,” Lynes writes. For some, much of life is also about the act of forgiveness. “Forgiveness is tough for her,” Lynes contends in second person, “But she keeps trying, stabbing words onto the screen, pushing towards first-person voice. Closing in on her core.”
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
“Critters: Wandering Monsters"
by Allan Dotson
Published by YNWP
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$29.95
ISBN 9-77869-066-2
Critters: Wandering Monsters, is another tour-de-force graphic novel by Regina writer, artist, game designer, and teacher, Allan Dotson, and it follows on the horns and tails of Critters: Underdark, a graphic novel shortlisted for a Saskatchewan Book Award.
The new 205-page epic “was born out of [Dotson’s] desire to become a better comics storyteller,” he explains. The story explores “three kinds of evil,” including “systemic evil,” described as an evil that encompasses “monsters raised for war, trained to see others as enemies, rewarded for cruelty, and taught to value gold and power above all else.” Dotson writes, “We don’t have to imagine that world. We live in it.” (One need only watch the news to confirm this.) But the book is also about friends who become family, adventure, and “choosing empathy over fear,” and there’s a good dose of humour across the busy pages, as well.
There are no less than “13 locations, 21 characters and 5 shape change disguises,” in Dotson’s fantastical world, the first part of which is set in the subterranean landscape of black and white caves and cliffs, the second part on the green, brown, red and orange-hued “Surface,” where humans share the Dinosaur Valley, forests and mountains with elephants, monkeys, winged horses and a spiky-tailed, bat-winged lion-type-of-thing that preys on those very horses.
At the outset, a group of five distinctive and youthful monsters are in a cave when they’re suddenly attacked by “cat bats” that have “escaped from the medusa’s train and are on the run from the dwarves.” Of these five characters, the snake-haired female in a caped jumpsuit, Lena, and her insulting (“stupid hair”) semi-adversary—the snaggled-toothed, pointy-eared hag, Sally, aka Saliel—are almost human-looking. We learn that Lena’s mother is Dread Lady Linorm, a sword-and-arrow-carrying medusa who “sells little monsters at the wizards’ market.”
Child-like Eddy is white-furred with spidery legs and Cycloptic-ish eyes. He’s an “Ettercap,” and part of the book’s humour derives from his innocence and basic diction, ie: “Der is a balla fyre? Shood we be wurreed ‘bout dat?” At one point Eddy warns Lena not to “tok” to a spell-casting creature, not because he can “take over [their] minds or something,” but because he’s “jus’ super boring.” No one’s certain why shapeshifter Uriel is being punished, but it could be for “Coming home late,” “Talking out of turn,” or “Laughing at a funeral.” In another funny frame, Lena tells Saliel that she doesn’t “know any fighting spells,” but she does “know a spell to mend [her] cloths, and a spell to clean [her] clothes, and a spell to make [her] clothes smell nice.” Sarcastic Saliel responds: “No fighting spells? That’s stupid.”
Reading this tale is like wandering through a dreamscape. There are always new characters, and they might be shapeshifters, delvers, warriors, elves, medusa wizards, mages, or minotaurs (to name a few). I laughed when Saliel, in a metafiction moment, said “I can barely keep track of what I’m supposed to look like.” For more Dotson: maycontainmonkeys.com.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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