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Jul 31, 2020rab1953 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
I am in awe of Ann-Marie MacDonald. She brings together so many current themes, makes them dramatic, and makes them matter to me as a reader in a fluid and coherent storyline. Some elements of the story are intensely uncomfortable, and they are intended to be. Others raise provocative ways of looking at the mid-twentieth century that may not be new, but are insightful. She offers no simple resolutions, but nevertheless takes readers on a satisfying journey with some interesting characters and compelling stories. The central character, Madeleine, is nine when we meet her, and we see a new home through her eyes. Unlike the over-knowing kids in some books (and movies), she sees and understands, or fails to, in a way that seems to me to be consistent with a nine year old, and her vision is fascinating. She does not understand a lot of what she experiences until she becomes older and tries to make sense of how it has marked her. The fact that she is a tomboyish, mouthy lesbian makes her perspective more interesting, especially as she adopts the voices of her smart-ass cartoon characters. The picture that MacDonald gives of her relationships with her friends and rivals seems completely plausible. As a successful adult queer woman, she later finds her childhood both a source of comedy and a painful impediment to maturity. Her knowledge and insights seem so right-on that it’s hard not to see MacDonald examining her own childhood for a realistic picture of Madeleine’s psyche. (And in some regards, they do parallel MacDonald’s own childhood, but not, I hope, in the traumas that make up the story.) While Madeleine is interesting, so are the other protagonists, her parents. Her Acadian mother is the image of a 1960s housewife, and MacDonald shows that that means – organizing the household so that her husband is never troubled. The image of her hiding her cleaning clothes so that her husband need never imagine her as less than glamourous is perfectly telling. I never thought to be interested in the inner life of an air force executive officer, but Madeleine’s father Jack also has to struggle with a cruel morality. He makes his choices and pays a price, one of the themes of the book. Hard moral choices seem to be the central theme of the book, as all of the central characters have to face decisions and painful consequences. This sets a personal framework within the context of the Holocaust and the ’60s space race (or the arms race), the Vietnam War, anti-queer discrimination and prejudice against both outsiders and Indigenous peoples. When the policing system comes into the story, it’s hardly surprising that even a conscientious officer follows the prevailing current in the wrong direction. While no one ends up without damage, MacDonald does find a positive outcome for some. We can only hope to be among the lucky ones who survive the damage. While these are big and complex themes, MacDonald also manages to bring many other ideas into the plot, including trust and espionage, loyalty and truth, family, grief, pop culture and the news media, nature, and a distinct Canadian perspective on it all. Un Acadien errant stands in as a succinct summary of the storyline. It’s amazing how MacDonald uses philosophical observations on these subjects to move the plot and reflect on her characters. At times, I felt that MacDonald was writing the story like a Hitchcock movie. The plot moves along like a movie, balancing quick cross-cut edits with slow building tension. I think the novel reflects her success as a playwright. Even the crow’s-point-of-view asides are a deliberate intrusion, an invitation to step outside of the plot and think about what the story means. I’m disappointed that MacDonald has written only two novels, because I’ve read her first one, and I’d like to read more of her.