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It feels as if Coady is writing out of my own memory
Book Review
By Derryll White
Coady, Lynn (1998). Strange Heaven.
This is Lynn Coady’s first novel, written in Fredericton, New Brunswick but, in large part looking at her native Cape Breton and life around Halifax, Nova Scotia.
When I first read this novel many years ago I fell in love with the way this young woman told a story. After reading her latest, The Antagonist, I decided to revisit Strange Heaven and see if I could recover what the latest volume took from me.
Coady takes the title from a very old John Donne poem where he unlocked paradise and found succor in the womb of the world. And for her main character Bridgit, confined in the first half of ‘Strange Heaven’ in a psychiatric ward, paradise presumably exists in the ability to observe without judgment. She lives in a world where she only engages when she chooses to.
When I was young I had several friends in psych wards in Vancouver and San Francisco. Very similar to Coady’s story, it was joyous to visit them, to fashion sculptures from very large melted and twisted hypodermic needles. This usually culminated in my busting out with said friends and riding public transit, horrifying all and sundry with the presence of obviously deranged and crazy people waving insulting, scary pieces of dangerous paraphernalia – the age of AIDS and all. In any case, Coady dredged those acts out of my memory.
Lynn Coady is very good at catching this somewhat psychotic behaviour. Although this is her first novel she is mature in her objectivity and very sensitive to the institutional environment. There are autobiographical notes here, declaiming small-town attitudes and the ennui that leads to delinquency and trouble. Where she is at her absolute best, however, is when she observers the workings of her small-town Maritime family and friends. The chaos of these relationships becomes disturbingly real to this reader. She makes me feel as though I have been there. With the best of intentions, her family never stops pushing, probing, trying to shape Bridgit’s future while, at the same time, keeping her at home so they can have some control.
I feel as if Lynn Coady is writing out of my own memory – a teenager needing to bust out and discover the whole world, and the possibilities contained therein. The author is very strong and clear when she talks about the risks men pose to young women. She writes of the innate lust men have, and compares that to the disinterest many women feel. I found her embarrassingly clear on this point.
This is a wonderful first novel. At the time it made me feel that a strong new Canadian talent was emerging, and I still believe that, in spite of ‘The Antagonist,’ which I did not like. I would encourage fans of Can Lit to read ‘Strange Heaven’.
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TWO NATIONS – He had worked in mills all across the Maritimes and then moved through Ontario, completely eschewing Quebec. “Held my nose the whole goddam way, going through on the train,” he said.
MAGIC – Bridgit was very interested in God at that age because religion seemed to embody the only stories of magic and complete improbability that everyone actually believed in – children and adults alike.
COPING – And the problem with a happiness that large and unrestrained was the idea of it going away again, which was unbearable. Unbearable to Bridgit, although Mona obviously never thought about that at the time of her happiness, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to have it.
THE WARD – Here the strangeness was a given. It made Bridgit tense because it was like vertigo. The temptation was to seize the opportunity to be weird, to revel in the fact that anything you said or did in front of these people was of no consequence. It was the fear of falling into madness, the easiest thing to do under the circumstances. The only thing that was, in fact, expected of you.
PERCEPTIONS – The sign said: EVERY MALE OVER 20 YEARS OF AGE WANTS TO PORK A 17-YEAR-OLD, STUPID ARSE.
FAMILY – The family was a volatile thing. The family, usually the organism responsible for the child’s internment in Four South in the first place, could not normally be expected to comprehend why one of its number would need to be there.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
