"I slip back to the bedroom with the big window. I need to be alone for a moment, to try and get some grip. Fashion magazines lay scattered on the bed. As the girls laugh and dance in the other room, I look through these magazines. I try to find a picture of Suzanne. But I can't. I begin to panic. My head feels light enough that it might float right off my body. My arms tingle. I'm calmed by my hands, by the raised veins like little maps."
Joseph Boyden is a Canadian novelist living in Ontario. He's written three books, which form a trilogy centered around the same family. Through Black Spruce is the second book in this trilogy. The third book, The Orenda, has also been reviewed here.
Once praised by many within Canada's First Nations community, and hailed as an "authentic voice" representing the experiences of Canada's first peoples, the author has since come under scrutiny after his claims of First Nations ancestry were called into question.
For my part, I'm really not interested in whether Boyden can claim First Nations ancestry or not. I care about the content of his stories, and this idea that only members of a group can tell stories about that same group is ridiculous. Would it have been better for Boyden to stay quiet on the matter of his ancestry? Probably, but results of DNA tests and a memoir written by his ex-wife (however good it might be) don't invalidate the quality of his fiction.
On to the book at hand. In Through Black Spruce a young Cree woman journeys south to Toronto, Montreal and New York to look for her missing sister. At the same time her uncle, an ex-pilot remaining in their small town, gets on the wrong side of a local drug dealer.
If, like me, you've read The Orenda don't feel any trepidation regarding this book. Parts of Through Black Spruce are certainly violent, but nothing in it approaches the bleak savagery of The Orenda. The ending of The Orenda left me devastated, and I'm not sad to say that the ending of Through Black Spruce is both a lot more hopeful and a lot more forward-looking.
Is Through Black Spruce as good as The Orenda? I'd have to say no, it isn't. Through Black Spruce might be a lot sunnier (stories of survival aside), but it lacks the focus of The Orenda, and the ending doesn't quite come together as it ought to. It's definitely a good book, and moreover a good book all the way through, but the protagonist's day of reckoning is almost an afterthought, as if the author couldn't decide how to tie together the two stories he was telling.
I'm planning on reading the first book in this trilogy, Three Day Road, whenever I come across it. It won a lot of awards at the time, and I'm thinking it's probably better than Through Black Spruce.
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