Perhaps it’s only to give readers an idea of how special it all was to Charlie.
“I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the writing of a man’s life at least gives you an idea of just how special it all was to him the first time around.”
That’s from Dennis Bock’s previous novel, The Communist’s Daughter, but elements of that novel appear to have remarkable resonance with this year’s Giller-longlisted Going Home Again.
“Perhaps it’s still early enough in this story to admit to you without fear of stating the obvious that the people in my life – those who surround me now, who crowd my past – are and always have been my fuel, my inspiration, my tabula rasa. I cut my teeth upon their sores and injuries, illnesses and deaths.”
It’s fortunate that there is some thematic overlap between the novels, for discussing Going Home Again in detail risks revealing some of the “sores and injuries, illnesses and deaths” which unfold in this story.
Harper Collins, 2013
The novel begins quietly, with Charlie preparing for a family birthday, but with allusions to troubled times; more than half of its pages are turned with musing upon what has come before, and ruminations lead to explorations and revelations, and Dennis Bock exposes the way in which everyday tensions conflate and ignite.
Aspects of the plot might be unexpected, although the preface does prepare readers in some ways, but it is not surprising that a central preoccupation of the novel is the idea of home.
To begin with, Charlie returns to Toronto after separating from his wife, leaving her and their daughter behind him in Madrid. But Toronto is not necessarily ‘home’ for Charlie.
“It stood for the place I had yearned to run away from, the place I’d lost, and it had the charming and minor-key bravado of a city that still seemed too much in search of itself and at the same time too inclined to declare itself as one to be reckoned with. For me, it was a hometown by default and cruel luck, since Nate and I came here to live with our uncle after our parents were killed in a car crash.”
The relationship between the brothers forms a significant component of the novel (perhaps it is ‘home’) but a woman Charlie loved when he was a student in Montreal is of vital significance too.
“At that moment I was a man gazing into the deepest pool of them all, that of the irretrievable past, and trying to figure out his part in it. I could see only Holly’s back and arms and hands, which were moving as gracefully as if she were illustrating a story for the benefit of the young man she was standing with.”
Perhaps cities are simply places to come from, not necessarily homes. “‘I guess Montreal’s better than most places you can come from,’ I said.” Perhaps ‘home’ is more about relationships than geography.
“When your heart knows only the perfect impulse to share everything with someone without shame or resignation or restraint. She was talking about the difference between who we used to be and who we were now and how the space that remains when love ends becomes an empty grey thing you never thought you’d become.”
Perhaps Charlie’s ‘home’ is that “empty grey thing”. Perhaps ‘home’ is more about memory than anything else.
“I could not let happen what had happened to the memories of my parents, whom I remembered now as people I’d once known and loved deeply; but always flittering about was the odd sensation that I’d made them up out of thin air, that their lives had been as fleeting as a dream.”
If knowing and loving are fleeting, what can be certain in life? If these elements, so essential to creating a home, a true sense of belonging, are shaken, where can a foundation be built?
“But here I was, home again and back in her life, and neither of us had the heart to explain that our troubles weren’t so easily solved.”
Going Home Again draws a new set of struggles for Charlie, and raises the question in readers’ minds that perhaps home is where we lose.
Have you read Dennis Bock’s fiction before?
Or, are you planning to?
Dennis Bock will be at this year’s IFOA.
Going Home Again is my latest IFOA Wednesday read: great fun.
It wasn’t my favourite either, but I do think Charlie is an interesting character. Maybe it’s easier to understand some of his decisions if one thinks about the fact that he hasn’t had much of a “home” (his parents having died when he was young) and he is still trying to sort out what relationships are supposed to be like; obviously his brother had a great deal of difficulty with that too. (Understatement: I know.)
Maritally, I thought both Charlie and his wife were behaving selfishly, dabbling in the idea of splitting, stumbling about with maybes, leaving their daughter’s wishes aside in the chaos. Was she forcing the situation with Paris at Christmas, trying to broadcast her separation and independence, declaring his presence unnecessary? (For her, perhaps.) Was he simply not capable of thinking about “going home” for Christmas to be with his daughter, aside from the marital conflict? It seems like a situation where the two adults make decisions for their own personal reasons, while kids get caught in the maelstrom.
It gets really interesting when one considers that Charlie originally agreed openly to “side” with Nate against Nate’s ex-wife, but then when Charlie spoke to her he seemed to believe that she was simply responding to her children’s needs and that Nate was being unreasonable. So is Charlie simply incapable of that kind of analytical thought when faced with his own anger with his own wife, or is his wife actually setting aside her daughter’s needs to focus on her own. And of course, because we spend all our narrative time in Charlie’s head, we can’t really know for sure. But it’s interesting to think about.
I finished this one the other day – and I didn’t like it much. I found it took too long to get the story started, and as a character I disliked Charlie a lot. I love the point Sandra made about him though, and his experience of fatherhood and being separate from his child. Although I found him to be a bit of a tool in that regard, because he claims he loves his daughter, gets angry with his wife when she wants to take their daughter to Paris for Christmas, yet he travels across the world, leaving his daughter for months without seeing her. That bothered me – a lot with out his character acted during that particular scene. But it’s the only part that really stands out for me as memorable in any way – (perhaps because I wanted to smack the guy for being an ass.) But overall this book was underwhelming for me.
Read this recently and found Charlie’s character and perspective quite interesting as well as his relationship with his daughter. Charlie is somewhat “spoiled” and has an easier time than many fathers who are separated from their children i.e. he can afford to fly his daughter from Spain to Canada for a visit and can fly to see her at Christmas on a personal whim so the pain of separation is less of a challenge than many fathers in his situation would experience. He is reflective which makes him easy to like but he probably has some serious growing up to do. I read The Ash Garden so long ago that memory fails but I think I might try it again and maybe The Communist’s Daughter. Do you think that would be a good plan or should I try the short stories first?
That’s true. And I suppose we can compare/contrast that with his relationship with the boys as their uncle (that scene at the Riverside Pool was fascinating: I like how we aren’t told “what to think”) and how he naturally takes on that responsibility when he relocates to Toronto and, too, there is the situation with Holly’s daughter (which might have taken another turn, had Charlie’s daughter not been so close in age to her). All very interesting. (And it’s just occurred to me that there is a similarity between his nephews’ circumstances and Charlie’s/Nate’s, given the situation at the end of the book. Just rethinking the relationships with young people in the novel brought that out for me in a fresh light.)
My favourite, of all four, is his first, Olympia, which I read around the time that I read David Bezmozgis’ Natasha, which also told of the adjustments of a family that had immigrated to Canada. (I enjoyed them both a great deal.) I liked The Ash Garden (but a novel with some thematic similarities which I loved was Shaena Lambert’s Radiance) and was wholly surprised to find the story in The Communist’s Daughter readable and interesting, but Olympia remains my favourite. One aspect of his storytelling that I consistently enjoy is that the events relayed are rooted in relationships, whether the tale is of family dynamics (as in this novel) or historical/political events.