Dianne Warren (1) (1950–)

Out of the blue, middle aged, Frances Mary Moon lets loose a secret that she has kept from her boyfriend for the entire 20 years they have been together. She once had a baby, and that baby died. What's more she once had a husband that she never divorced, and he was not the father of her child.

Through flash backs we relive Frances's childhood with her, and follow her into young womanhood and throughout middle age. How could she just step out of her life and start a new one while pretending the old never existed? Well it may have had a lot to do with her mother, who was all for putting unsavory matters behind you and pretending they never happened.

This was a thought provoking story that often had me wondering what choices I would have made had I been in her place. I was deeply engrossed in these pages from start to finish.

I received an advance copy for review… (more)

I was pleased to discover that Dianne Warren, whose novel Cool Water won the Governor-General’s Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, had a new novel out. Unfortunately, I didn’t find The Diamond House as engaging as her first novel.

The book focuses on Estella, the youngest daughter of Oliver and Beatrice Diamond. When she is five years old, Estella finds some letters and learns that her father, a successful brick-factory owner, was once briefly married to Salina, an independent and unconventional woman who aspired to be a ceramics artist. Raised by her mother Beatrice, a very traditional woman, Estella often wishes she had been raised by Salina. She too longs to be independent, but her plans are always derailed by the needs of her family and, though she does have a career as a teacher, she always reverts to the role of a dutiful daughter.

The novel begins in 1902 when Estella and Oliver first meet and ends in the present after “the Raptors had won the championship.” It begins in the Ottawa Valley but soon moves to Regina and northern Saskatchewan.

The contrast between Salina and Beatrice is striking. Salina has an “independent manner” and does not want a “predictable life.” She wonders how a young woman like herself can “become what she dreams of being.” She runs away from home and sets off for Europe. Beatrice, on the other hand, is anything but daring. When she and Oliver move to western Canada, she is “unsettled by this wilderness, and she felt a longing for quiet, conventional Bryne Corners, Ontario, and the house she had grown up in.” Whereas Salina was “a free spirit and a suffragist,” Beatrice “was determined to adapt as well as any woman to the role of wife and mother” and vows to offer Oliver “stability and a well-kept home.”

How could Oliver be attracted to two such very different women? Would Oliver and Salina have been happy together when Salina was “not likely a woman who would have adapted well to being a homemaker”? Certainly, Estella suspects that were Salina her mother, she would have encouraged her independent spirit.

Certainly, Estella is not encouraged to pursue a career other than marriage. Oliver proves to be a traditional man who expects his sons to work in the family business but makes no room for his daughter; “he’d not taken his daughter seriously, and that consequence was her career as a mathematics teacher – a perfectly good career, but not a dream career.” He never really considers her dreams, though he did once write to Salina that he has separated from his family because they have no dreams “and without dreams there is no joy.” Because she is female and because she is single, Estella is expected to put her family’s needs first, so at different times, she ends up a caregiver to a brother, her mother, and her father. Advancing into an administrative role at school is not possible “because her teaching record had too many interruptions when she’d taken leaves to care for her brother, and her mother and . . . ” Eventually, Estella takes steps to assert herself in the family business but there are unforeseen consequences and in the end she asks “Had it been worth it?”

This book reminded me of another I recently read: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. Just as Cyril makes the decisions about the house he and Elna will have, Oliver does not ask Beatrice what she would like in a house: “He seemed to believe he knew what a married woman would want.” Estella and Maeve are in similar positions; they are educated but the possibility of advanced education is never considered by their fathers.
Though Estella does not live a stellar life that would befit her name, she is the star of the book. She emerges as a fully developed character. At times I found myself cheering for her when she did something daring and at other times, I could have cried in frustration as she coasted through life. Perhaps because I’m older, I really liked the older Estella. Her questioning the meaning of her life and her legacy is something with which I can identify.

The novel does not cover new ground. Many other books have showcased the limited opportunities for women because of societal expectations. The Diamond House begins well but the pace really slows down (like Estella’s life perhaps). Momentum picks up towards the end, but the middle is a slog. A bit of judicious revision/editing would have this book shining more like the diamond in its title.

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).… (more)