veeronald's reviews
119 reviews

The end.

The best way I could describe this novel is in one word: slippage. The slippage of thought that happens when your mind is temporally, spatially, slipping from ideas to emotions to memory to everything in between, all at once.

Nothing happens, really. And nothing comes from it. Ali Smith is one of my favourite authors if only because I have never been as captivated by the accuracy through which she captures a moment, a thought, an observation, a life. There is such fluidity in the trail of consciousness and unconsciousness. This book doesn't fail in any of the writing; it has phenomenal delivery. But it's simply disappointing, because aside from the writing the book almost seems... meaningless? It's writing without content.

Knowing what I have read, I don't think I will ever reread the book (but possibly sections of it), and having that lodged in my mind is perhaps one of the worst scenarios I could envision after having read a book.

This book is most striking, to me, in two ways:

Its sympathetic, realistic portrayal of being human, brought about in a slow unravelling of truthfulness. It captures the various folds of a story captured by each individual experiencing it so very well.

Secondly, the reoccurring mirroring of the characters, events, and emotions with the surreal Icelandic landscape. The story becomes visceral, harsh, and imbedded into the very lore of the land. It's beautiful to read, and worth taking the time to read again, pausing to let the words sink in.

The novel, however, does start off slowly. Slowly in that only by halfway through did I get a grip on the story, enough to get me to read further. I'm not even sure if this is a bad thing (the pace matches the slow churning of Iceland at the time, its people, and the harsh, barren landscape and slow seasons, the slow reality of the events that take place; I wouldn't have it otherwise), but rather a warning for those who would normally want to close the book and leave it. It's worth the read.

A couple of times I also found the protagonist, Agnes, slip into a state that seemed written out of necessity, rather than what I had imagined her character to be willing to or capable of doing (and doing so abruptly, as though, again, not because the writing had arrived at a changing point, but the story had).

Then again, I almost think this is yet again an unlikely strength of the writing: Agnes is, after all, someone we never really know, someone of multiple truths.

This book of stories reads less like a memoir and more like a storyteller revisiting her thoughts, dreams, and choices after a lifetime of being in her own shoes, the boundaries of her own memory extending as far back as her ancestors and to the geological shaping of familial land.

Familiarity extends just on the cusp of awareness. It's something that, as a Canadian, is particularly familiar: the distance of time and space, displacement, efforts to find and gain belonging, the distinctive difference between all people who cross our paths - and yet the webbed roots that trace us back together.

In looking to unearth her sentiment belonging to her family and to the land they stole and stripped and bled dry by the sheer fear of hope and survival, Munro looks for memory where sometimes only story can function as a reliable medium. But it's a reality unabashed by the the faults of memory or by the nature of human stories.

It's brilliant. Soft and complex. Perfectly human.

A tumble of visuals and an upswell of impressions.

Field Notes for the Arctic Tundra - are they for the tundra itself, or the "scratch at the heart" that the landscape has left on those who dwell there, ever so slightly? And am I, now, one of those dwellers?

I enjoyed reading this little collection. I only wish there was more than could fit into a few spare minutes.