Fb2 The Way the Crow Flies ePub

I tackled this book shortly after reading MacDonald's award-winning bestseller, FALL ON YOUR KNEES, which both my wife and I simply devoured, albeit a dozen years after its publication and international success. That book topped 500 pages, and this one, THE WAY THE CROW FLIES, went over 800 pages! Even so, I managed to get through it in just over two weeks, even with some minor heart surgery thrown in somewhere in the middle of it. This book has probably already had reams of reactions written, so there's probably not much original that I could add. It is, quite simply, 'unputdownable' (is that a word?). This book has something for everyone. I was originally intrigued by reading that the core sequence of events took place around the time of the Cuban Missile crisis in October of 1962. During that pivotal moment in Cold War history I was not quite halfway through army basic training in Ft Leonard Wood, Missouri. As trainees, we had very limited access to media reports of what was happening, but we could, I remember, feel a palpable tension emanating from our drill instructors and cadre, an unsettling sense of urgency about what they were doing - training us!

MacDonald's protagonists in TWTCF are a young family in the Royal Canadian Air Force (the RCAF no longer exists), the McCarthys. The father, Jack, is a WWII veteran and a senior officer at a training base in Centralia, Ontario. They have just been transferred there from Germany. Jack and Mimi (an Acadian beauty) have two children, Mike (Michel) and Madeline, who are twelve and eight when the story opens. Although MacDonald offers multiple points of view in the course of this mammoth epic, Madeline is the main focus of the story, with Jack running a close second. Jack's big disappointment in life was a flight training accident he suffered during the war, when he was just 18, which impaired his vision, making him unsuitable for flying status. Ever after he "flew a desk" as a support officer. That partial 'blindness' plays an important symbolic part of the narrative, as he is chronically unable to see what is happening to his children, or to properly see "the small picture" in his constant striving to understand the "big picture" of Cold War conflicts and intrigues in which he is naively embroiled, things which nearly destroy him in the end.

MacDonald is a writer of prodigious talent, mixing dark fairy tale symbolism with comical samples of pop culture and humor, and that comic relief is very necessary in this disturbing and increasingly dark story of pedophiles, political intrigue and entrapment. The author has obviously done her homework. I learned more about that aforementioned Cuban Missile crisis and also about the U.S. missile program and space race between the U.S. and the USSR from this book than I could ever have imagined. There is much here too about the sinister involvement of former Nazis and war criminals in that missile and space development program - on both sides of the Iron Curtain. (A selected bibliography is appended at the end of the novel.)

The darkest part of the plot, however, is found in the lives of the little girls of the story, Madeline and her classmates (and they come alive in ways that fiction has seldom succeeded in the past), and the vile ways in which they are victimized by an unscrupulous pedophile, practically under the noses of the children's unsuspecting and preoccupied parents. This sexual abuse has far-ranging ripples and repercussions which will haunt these kids - and their parents - for the rest of their lives, as is represented in the continuing story of Madeline McCarthy and her family over the next couple of decades.

I wonder how many people are frightened away from a book like TWTCF by its very 'heft.' I pity those readers who are. Because what MacDonald has wrought here is a simply stunningly beautiful book - primarily about human relationships and families. And she has placed it into an historical and cultural context that makes it all the more believable and effective. I can't understand how she managed to keep all those balls in the air, and how she made it all seem so effortless, so real, and so darkly beautiful. If you love good writing and a good story, I entreat you - read this book! - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir BOOKLOVER

I'd put off reading this novel since it came out. Mostly because of the effect that 'Fall on Your Knees' had on me. (Which included handing out more than fifty copies to friends and family since its publication.) Fear must have been part of it, fear about how much better this one might be, might not be... 'Fall' was proof to me of how great writing could be. The author writing something better might have had me intimidated (yes, I'm a writer), and yet her writing something 'not better, not even as good as' might have disappointed me so much to have had a deleterious effect. Fortunately, neither possibility resulted.

Ms MacDonald is an extremely talented writer. There is an assuredness in her writing, in how she executes what she does, that goes deep. For me, a novel (or a screenplay for that matter) has its author taking the reader by the hand, saying "I have a story for you. Walk with me while I tell it to you..." When this is done with confidence (and not just 'writerly ability, getting the vocabulary, the grammar, the construction right) the whole reading experience is taken up a level, approaching being transported. And yet she does not 'over-write'. She is not prone to 'purple prose'. She is as likely to throw out a juicy riff as she is to dig deep. Clearly a great observer of people, she understands the complexities of character and relays them with honesty and humour. Moreover, though every piece of writing is, at its core, an expression of the writer, 'Crow' is clean, unencumbered by -at least to these eyes- literary earmarks.

This novel has a lot going on. And yes, I'm not sure that it needed to be as expansive as it is. ("Couldn't you just take out a few notes?") When I began the final 150 or so pages, I confess I did mutter 'This better be good...' (In fairness, it was...and it wasn't.) I'll admit that a judicious amount of editing might have made it an even better experience to read than it was. There are a sizable number of cultural references -no surprise here, as the story begins in 1962 and ends two decades-plus later- that do provide for some smiles for anyone the author's age, but at times, seemed to veer towards the indulgent...and yet...and yet Ms MacDonald does it with a very zippy, tangy flair, in a way that doesn't burden, doesn't weigh down the execution. (The sign of true talent is to make everything seem so effortless. This is what you get with her novels.)

I'd forgotten how well Ms MacDonald does heartbreak. In this regard, she reminds me of a cook who is renowned for her pastry. She puts on a meal, the courses are providing enormous pleasure for the diners, and then all of a sudden she brings out a plate and you remember "Oh...that's right...she's a pastry genius, too..." I was caught off-guard when she 'brought out the (heartache) pastry'; my usual response was to close the book and consider where it was all going...and whether or not I was up to it. But again, she manages this without it becoming this set-piece of self-indulgence.

This story has some quite-picante twists that reminded me of Ms MacDonald's craftsmanship, her authoritative ways as a writer...never mind her deft touch. By turns a travelogue of the times, an exploration of Canadiana, sexual, regional and familial identities, all wrapped around a very sobering incident, the novel is a fine tale, the sort you'd want to have a travelmate tell you on a cross-country ViaRail ride.

My standard quote regarding 'Fall on Your Knees' has always been what I opined to a bookseller: "If you're a writer, this novel will either intimidate you so much as to never write another word, or so inspire you as to write as you've never written before." ''The Way the Crow Flies'? It doesn't have the same energy, the same dynamic, or even the same intent. So maybe it's unfair to expect as strident an opinion might result from its reading. But I will say this: Ann-Marie MacDonald is a gem, someone whose talent manages to reassure while still blowing away this writer, reminding him what can be accomplished if one stays true to one's own voice.

I look forward to hearing Ms MacDonald's voice again and again and again.