Who Can Remember Pain?

The Handmaid's Tale 

by Margaret Atwood

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”   ― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale



I have enjoyed several of Margaret Atwood's novels over the years; especially Oryx and Crake, the first novel in her Maddam Trilogy. I had not read The Handmaid's Tale until our Thursday evening book group chose it for our most recent book discussion. This also gave me the opportunity to use my Kindle app which I rarely use since I prefer the feeling of holding a "real" book. I was not disappointed by this unusual dystopian postmodern tale of a future that one hopes we may avoid.

The title of this now classic novel echoes the component parts of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, this is suggestive of an almost allegoric aspect of the story but also a pervasive theme that is woven throughout the book; that is theocracy, a government in which there is no separation between state and religion. We see this in the names of the servants who are called “Marthas” and the local police as “Guardians of the Faith”; soldiers as “Angels”; and the “Commanders of the Faithful”. In addition Atwood's vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical references. All the stores have biblical names: Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh, Milk and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names like Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. Using religious terminology to describe people, ranks, and businesses, masks political skulduggery in pious language. The reader is faced with an ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead insist they act on the authority of the Bible itself. Politics and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan “God is a National Resource” predominates.

In the society of The Handmaid's Tale, while even the powerful live very restricted lives, however the Handmaids are confined to their bedrooms except for sanctioned outings to grocery stores, childbearing Ceremonies, and executions; as a result they are worse off than most. Doubly trapped by their low social statuses and their fertile bodies, Handmaids barely get to do anything. Their bodies' fertility both enforces their confinement and paradoxically promises them a kind of freedom.
If Handmaids become pregnant by their Commanders (this is their sole purpose in this society) their reward is not being sent off to die. If they do get pregnant, they're confined to their bodies in a different way, forced to give birth to children they don't get to keep, fathered by men they don't love.

I found this a book that I appreciated for its literary values more than the content which was brutal at times. This is undoubtedly to be expected in a dystopian tale, but understanding the fact did not provide solace for the reader. The story is a tale of "witness" by a rebellious handmaid named Offred. Her rebellion begins with recording her story, but extends to other activities that eventual provide what little suspense there is in the tale. As with all first person narratives the reader must maintain some skepticism in recognition of the unreliability of the narrator. We never quite know what's true in The Handmaid's Tale; even when people state their names, they're lying. Throughout the book we're reminded that this is a story and that the narrator is altering some of the details. The narrator wishes she could change the events that happened to her through retelling them, or what she calls "reconstruction." Even the epilogue, with its "Historical Notes," reinforces the idea that this is a tale, a story, and that the manner of the telling is as important as what the narrator reveals through it.

This leads me to the only substantive criticism I have of the book in that I would have appreciated more information about some of the other characters, especially Offred's friend Moira who disappears from the story before it is concluded. We find Offred narrating "I can't remember the last time I saw her. It blends in with all the others; it was some trivial occasion. She must have dropped by; she did that, she breezed in and out of my house", but that was some time ago and it is only her memory of Moira that Offred captures.

This is not a book for the faint of heart, but as some in our book group related Atwood's beautiful prose has an almost mesmerizing effect that helps you move past some of the more gruesome details of this dystopic tale. My conclusion is that this deserves to be considered a postmodern classic that adds luster to the standing of Margaret Atwood in my personal reading pantheon of authors.

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Powerful Insights

Still Life: 

A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel 

by Louise Penny

“Life is choice. All day, everyday. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It's as simple and as complex as that. And as powerful. so when I'm observing that's what I'm watching for. The choices people make”  ― Louise Penny, Still Life





Both my sister and a good friend recommended that I read the mysteries of Louise Penny; so I decided to start with her first Chief Inspector Gamache novel. I was not disappointed.

The mystery is set in a small town in rural Canada.  The narrative introduces Armand Gamache of the Sorete du Quebec. The mystery proper begins with the discovery of the body of Jane Neal, a middle-aged artist, near a woodland trail used by deer hunters outside the village of Three Pines. Upon first investigation it appears she was the victim of a hunting accident. Soon Gamache, an appealingly competent senior homicide investigator, is summoned. He is able to determine that this was not an accident but the woman was most likely murdered. The narrative continues as clues are slowly uncovered while the residents of Three Pines are introduced. Some of them come under suspicion while the suspense builds with each piece of new evidence.

I enjoyed the author's development of a variation on the theme of the clue hidden in plain sight. She also introduces the bilingual, bi-cultural aspect of Quebecois life as well as arcane aspects of archery and art to deepen her narrative. Most of all there are memorable characters whose relationships make the mystery more compelling as they and their interrelationships are gradually revealed.

This is a mystery filled with intriguing insights that develops a good foundation for further exploits of Armand Gamache. I would recommend this author's first novel, which was the runner-up for the CWA's Debut Dagger Award in 2004, to all readers who enjoy a good mystery.

A Small Canadian Village

The Salterton Trilogy 

by Robertson Davies

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness." - Robertson Davies


Salterton is a small Canadian village that receives attention in this fine trilogy from Robertson Davies; at least some of the people in the village receive his attention and for readers that is a good thing. While I did not enjoy this quite as much as some of his later novels, there was sufficient humor and wit to keep me entertained. In the final novel of the trilogy, Leaven of Malice, the central character Monica Gall is also the most likable character and as such kept me interested in the book when I tired of some of the other characters for whom the titular "malice" was more their style. The plot borders on the melodramatic, but perhaps the thespian in Davies is to blame for that. The central role that music plays in this novel is another signature of the Robertson Davies' style (see The Lyre of Orpheus for another example). The combination of interesting, if not likable, characters and the wit of the master storyteller made this a good read. For greatness visit The Cornish Trilogy.


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The Cunning Man 

by Robertson Davies

Cunning men, wizards and white witches, as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought unto, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind. . . .
   The body's mischiefs, as Plato proves, proceed from the soul: and if the mind be not first satisfied, the body can never be cured.
    Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)


Robertson Davies is more than just a good storyteller. He is a literate storyteller who fills his novels with references to literature, music, art and science and does so in an engaging way while creating characters that are so interesting that it is difficult to put the book down. At least that has been my experience and my only regret is that I have read so few of his novels.
The Cunning Man is a clever story, part mystery, part bildungsroman, part family saga and a bit of a romance, that keeps you reading to find out how the life of Jonathan Hullah, the cunning and wise doctor at the center of the book, will turn out and how those of the characters whose drama fills his life will also conclude. The doctor is a cunning man in the sense used by Robert Burton in his The Anatomy of Melancholy, a seventeenth century compendium of information about the subject of melancholy. Thus the cunning man is a sort of wizard who is as much a doctor of the soul as he is a doctor of the body. From Dr. Hullah's early days learning from a wise Indian woman called Mrs. Smoke through his years in medical school and as medic in the army he develops both expertise in traditional medicine and sometimes mysterious abilities to look into his patients' souls. The result makes for a unique career. Throughout the story the reader is treated to the differences between high and low church Anglicanism, how one deals with a journalist in the family and, most of all, how the cunning man spins his web of masterful medicine through it all.


The Cunning Man by Robertson Davies. Viking Press, New York. 1995



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That Summer in Paris

"… even in the 1960s, Mr. Callaghan was “perhaps the most unjustly neglected novelist in the English-speaking world,” - Edmund Wilson


Morley Callaghan was only twenty-six years old when he spent the summer of 1929 in Paris with his wife.
Born and raised in Canada, he had been encouraged in his writing by Ernest Hemingway when they were both journalists in Toronto and looked forward to seeing Hemingway again at his place in Paris. Along the way he stops off in New York and meets Sinclair Lewis and others of the Greenwich Village artistic crowd while establishing himself with the editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's who published his first book.
But it is in Paris that he tries to make a home for that one summer. In addition to Hemingway there is Scott Fitzgerald and Robert McAlmon with whom he develops some rapport. He manages to meet with "Jimmy" Joyce and his wife in spite of the protectiveness of Sylvia Beach who is on a mission to guard the privacy of Joyce. His memoir is uneven - surprisingly Paris did not seem that romantic or lively - but it is difficult to avoid some interest in the shenanigans of the trio of Scott, Ernest and Morley when the latter duo engage in boxing matches or when Morley and his wife encounter Scott and Zelda on the afternoon following a bender with them wasted in their apartment. Moments like these not only are fascinating but also serve to underscore the mythic images of these authors. Morley Callaghan would go on to write mainly unmemorable novels that according to some critics (see Wilson quote above) are unjustly neglected. But his summer in Paris reminds me that he was once a part of the twentieth century's greatest writers making Paris their home.


That Summer in Paris by Marley Callaghan. Exile Editions, Toronto. 2007 (1963)

Fifth Business

Can I really write of my boyhood? Or will that disgusting self-love which so often attaches itself to a man's idea of his youth creep in and falsify the story? I can but try. (p. 19)

One always learns one's mystery at the price of one's innocence. (p. 263)


I first read Robertson Davies more than twenty years ago and was impressed with the characters and action in his novel, What's Bred in the Bone. It was a story of an artist born to a patrician family whose life becomes entangled in mystery.
The prime thing I remember from that reading was my enjoyment of Davies story-telling ability. It has taken a couple of decades, but I finally read another of his novels, perhaps his best, and find that same story-telling ability still impresses me. Fifth Business is the first installment of the Deptford Trilogy by Davies and it is the story of the life of the narrator, Dunstan Ramsay. The entire story is told in the form of a letter written by Ramsay on his retirement from teaching at Colborne College, addressed to the school Headmaster. The book's title was explained by the author as a theatrical term, a character essential to the action but not a principal actor. This is made explicit in the focus of much the action on others, including Percy Boyd 'Boy' Staunton and his wife Leola, and Mrs. Dempster and her son Paul; all of whom influence and are influenced by the life of the narrator.

Davies discusses several themes in the novel, including the difference between materialism and spirituality. He has also created a sort of bildungsroman in the narrative of Dunstable 'Dunstan' Ramsay, who lives a life dedicated to teaching (history in a boys' school) and studying the lives of saints, becoming a hagiographer of some note. Significantly, Davies, then being an avid student of Carl Jung's ideas, deploys them in Fifth Business. Characters are clear examples of Jungian archetypes and events demonstrate Jung's idea of synchronicity. The stone thrown at Ramsay when he was a child reappears decades later in a scandalous suicide or murder. This along with the impetus in Ramsay's life of three "miracles" become the mainstays of the plot line. Finally, it is all held together by Davies attention to detail, his characterization and above all his ability to tell a good story. I expect to return to finish the Deptford Trilogy sooner rather than later.


Fifth Business in The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies. Penguin Books. 1977 (1970)
What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies. Viking Press, New York. 1985.