A single-sitting read, a summer road-trip, and Sesame Street: good reading.
Margriet De Moor’s Sleepless Night (1989; Trans. David Doherty 2019)
“Sleepless night succeeded sleepless night – agonized day followed agonized day.”
This, from L.M. Montgomery’s 1918 journal, came to mind when I was reading Margriet De Moor’s Sleepless Night (1989; revised 2016; translation by David Doherty 2019 via House of Anansi).
And that is how it begins for our narrator: “It’s another of those nights. A night to live through, without sleep.”
At just over a hundred pages long, this is a taut narrative. Tense and concise. “There was something perverse in my determination to keep happiness at bay, though for hours I had felt it darting around me like a stray dog.” The unnumbered segments of the story dart around the narrator’s unresolved emotions.
This wife has unanswered questions about an act committed by her husband. Whom she can no longer query directly as to his motivation and direction. Instead, she walks the floor, like Montgomery did; but unlike Montgomery, who wrote her way out of despair and uncertainty, Margriet De Moor’s character bakes.
She gets up in the night and combines ingredients. “When it is time to slide the cake pan or baking tray into the preheated oven, I set the kitchen timer. This is essential.” It’s essential, because it buttresses the narrative. But even more essential is the emotional territory traversed before the timer erupts.
André Alexis’s Days by Moonlight (2019)
The author’s Quincunx cycle began in 2014 with Pastoral, in which readers meet Father Pennant “on the warm April day that was his first in his new parish” when he is “so enchanted by the land, by the thistles and yellowish reeds at the side of the road, that he asked the driver to let him off at the sign that said ‘Welcome to Barrow’ so he could walk into town, suitcase and all”.
Alfred Homer, in Days by Moonlight, has read Pastoral too, although he doesn’t remember much of it. Something “about women fighting over a man, and a priest struggling with himself”, he says. So, let’s say that’s what Days by Moonlight is about as well. Although it too is preoccupied with the quiet details that comprise a life, the simple plants that grow in southwestern Ontario, the words that take root in bound volumes of poetry and prose, the four-legged and furred creatures who warm our beds and patrol our borders, and the intricate connections between human beings who explore county concession roads and the arteries of bustling metropoleis. (Yes, I had to look up the plural form of that.)
An unscheduled tonsillectomy and the thrill of discovering Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Eagle of the Ninth, “vague memories of gas stations and telephone poles” and “altruistic and profitable” ideas, “poems too dry to read” and “a belief in Love’s omnipotence and grandeur”: Days of Moonlight is most satisfying when viewed within the prism of the Quincunx and, even then, readers will likely yearn for the connecting line, pleading for the fifth.
Andrea Warner’s Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography (2018)
Until recently, everything I know about Buffy Sainte-Marie, I learned from Sesame Street. A few years ago, when my interest in indigenous history turned into a long and deliberate reading and viewing project, I started watching videos online, in which Buffy Sainte-Marie sings a bunch of songs that Big Bird didn’t know. Which is nothing against Big Bird, whose awareness of indigenous issues is likely more advanced than many Canadians’, since Buffy Sainte-Marie turned guest spot on Sesame Street into a regular gig.
“The fact that Indians exist – that was really important to get through to little kids and their caregivers. It’s important to get that message through before any kind of stereotyping makes a presence in their lives. So that when somebody says ‘Indians are no good,’ little kids can say, ‘Oh, no, Big Bird says Indians are okay.’”
But it turns out that her years on Sesame Street comprise about ten pages in her biography, so you can imagine how rewarding it is to read Andrea Warner’s book. Informative and entertaining, often in Sainte-Marie’s own words and always accessible and inviting. And so damn inspiring.
[…] Days By Moonlight by André Alexis – Consumed by Ink and Buried in Print […]
Sleepless Nights sounds like one I’d enjoy reading. I do have another of de Moor’s books on my shelf to look forward to as well.
You probably would enjoy it. Especially the fact that you can fall into it over an afternoon/evening: it reads very quickly!
I very much like the sound of Sleepless Night, it certainly sounds tense.
As you probably know I am spending quite a bit of time buried in Daphne Du Maurier at the moment. After which I have some review copies to catch up on.
Every single one of the du Maurier books you’ve been reading is of interest to me. If the event was to have lasted longer, I would have been tempted in several directions. So now to plan for next year!
I have the first two of these in my stack right now, and will hopefully get to them soon. I have been diligently reading the Quincunx, but am hoping that when he’s finished he will write a companion book to explain the connections between all the books for those of us who don’t get them! It doesn’t matter too much, though, since I have enjoyed all the books on their own.
Now you’ve made me want to read about Buffy! I don’t know very much about her at all.
Yes: a self-directed walking tour through the stations of the Quincunx…or something like that, eh? grins Did you read The Hidden Keys? I feel like there are more connections between that one (the third volume) and this latest one, even though it’s the town of Barrow that’s called out deliberately (from the first one). And even though Keys is all Toronto all the time and Days is rural and small-town. She was on Q not too long ago and it was a great interview: she is both quiet AND fierce – I love that.
I have read The Hidden Keys (and even I felt the Toronto vibes!) Will be looking for connections (probably fruitlessly)!
snorty laugh Nice to have company as we wander the streets and backroads though.
I had no idea Buffy was on Sesame Street! So very cool, I wish more kids shows included indigenous figures. I have that House of Anansi translation on my shelf but haven’t gotten to it yet, it looks good. I just finished reading French Exit by Patrick deWitt and LOVED it.
She was simply there, being herself, and yes, this should simply be happening on all kids’ shows. You’re making a lot of progress on longer-shelf-sitting-ARCs though: so that’s great! French Exit was fun, wasn’t it? So sharp, so wincingly witty. Were you saving it because you knew you’d love it, or was it just a lucky find when you needed some hilarity?
We actually chose it as our May book club pick! But yes, I’m getting around to my older ARCS too which feels so good LOL
Interesting set of reviews! I’m intrigued by the idea of a (slightly metafictional?) cycle – how would you say this entry fits into the Quincunx cycle as a whole? The biography of Buffy St. Marie also sounds excellent 🙂 Always appreciate it when a biographer makes the effort to thoughtfully quote the subject, featuring her own perspective on events, as much as possible.
I doubt they are readily available south of the border even though they are all from well-established indie presses here (think Graywolf or Coffee House in your landscape). Andre Alexis is such an interesting writer; I’ve been following his work for a couple of decades now but the Quincunx cycle has definitely got people’s attention. In this volume, I think he continues to play with ideas of what is sacred, how creative acts (poetry, sermons, love, witnessing) resonate within and between us, but, honestly, the themes echo and reverberate and it’s a bit disorienting, so I’m pinning a grand hope on next year’s final volume in the cycle. Yes, I wasn’t expecting the biography to be so interesting, actually: I though I’d just leaf through, look at the pictures. 🙂
Interesting books Buried! BTW My daughter has just been rereading LM Montgomery books – the Anne series, and the Emily series – and we talked a bit about Montogmery’s times and some of the attitudes that aren’t so appealing these days. (Just like a popular children’s series here. The Bilabong Books)
I’ve just read two Australian novels, but am soon to read the Japanese novel, The convenience store woman by Sayaka Murata. Im looking forward to that, and then, well, who knows? Probably a review copy memoir by film director Jocelyn Moorehouse who gave up her career for nearly two decades when she and her film director husband, PJ Hogan, had two autistic children. Another memoir! But, having worked in film archives and libraries pretty well all my career, I am interested. They have both made significant and successful films here and in the USA.
I was very into Buffy St. Marie about forty years ago. I recently listened to her most famous songs on YouTube, still loved them “Magic is Alive” still moves me.
Yes, me too laughs. How time flies! Actually, I was surprised to learn a few years ago that she had continued to produce and sing through all the intervening years. Her more recent work is very moving too, especially as calls to action for indigenous land rights and bringing awareness to the genocidal practices perpetrated against her people.
When I first discovered L.M. Montgomery’s journals in my 20s, I was struck by how much we had in common, being raised in very small and restrictive communities, as a creative personality living with people who felt that being creative was a way to try to avoid “real work”, and both the solitude and the loneliness she valued and experienced in this state. But as my own world widened, I realized that she and I would not have been friends (she being of an established family and well-off) and of course many of her attitudes were mired in the prejudice of her time (although she challenged many conservative ideas too, of course).
One of the large libraries in the city is under construction and not loaning out its books to inter-city loans, so virtually its entire (and large) fiction collection is on the shelves and I was browsing in some detail recently and spotted so many of the Text Classics paperbacks of Australian classics. Normally I get caught up in the few authors I already know and want to read more of (Jolley, Garner, White, Stowe, etc.) but I was struck by how many other authors in that series look interesting. I really, really do have to make a plan.
I’ve loved some of Jocelyn Moorehouse’s films (How to Make an American Quilt and A Thousand Acres (also Muriel’s Wedding, which she produced rather than directed), so I can see where that would be a very interesting memoir for sure. And more so, given your background. My review copy reading is down below 1% of my reading this year (and last) and that has been brilliant for encouraging my focus on reading projects but I do miss the sense of being more up-to-date.
I think this is the comment I tried to reply to on my device, but it didn’t work. I can’t recollect what I was going to say, but one thing you may not know is that the director of Muriel’s wedding is Jocelyn Moorehouse’s husband. The was apparently quite a lot of autobiography in that film. (It’s been in the news recently because the musical version, created a couple of years ago is on tour this year.)
Have you seen the musical or do you plan to? I imagine it would be a lot of fun. Although I wonder if you are expected to participate. That’s an idea that i love in theory, but, in reality, I am not a musical performer no matter how you stretch it. I’ve seen the movie at least twice though, maybe three times!
I would do my best to if it came to my city.
And no, I can sing along in a big group but I’m no musical performer either, unlike our children who can perform music in public. Our daughter loves musicals – I’d love to see her join an amateur musical group though they do take up a lot of your time.
I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the series “Grace and Frankie”, with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin (I love it), but the scenes surrounding the characters (not them, but I won’t say who as it’s not in place at the beginning of the series) who are performing in amateur musicals, remind me so heartfully of all the interpersonal politics that are associated with those productions (I used to be involved as a girl). Even if she is talented in that direction, I can imagine why she might not want to get into that situation! (Although obviously it’s fun too, or nobody would do it.)