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Loading... Y: A Novel (2012)by Marjorie Celona
2012 Giller Longlist  cait815 | Apr 1, 2013 |  A baby is abandoned at the Y. Why? Why do people choose the forks in the path that they do? People are so often incapable of recognising choices. They lack a perceptual awareness of their own abilities to influence their own course through their life. The novel follows the story of the abandoned baby and her childhood, and intersperses it with the story of her biological parents. The paths of the characters are littered with misery and bad choices. The bleakness is alleviated only a little by the naive hopes of the child. The characters were sketched in bold strong strokes, but didn't feel filled in. The use of the city as a character itself helped compensate for this. The rich imageries of the various neighbourhoods of Victoria were replete with details that provided strong contexts for the story lines. I enjoyed this the most. As she walked her characters along Dallas Rd at the ocean front, past the World's Tallest Totem, and over to Ogden Point where the cruise ships berth, I saw it readily in my mind. The down and outs of Pandora Ave and other marginal areas dominated the book. The rural areas out west, beside a provincial park, also played true to form, harboring an eclectic mix of reclusive people who seek refuge in the environment of towering trees "forming a nave", like a church, or an Emily Carr painting, as noted by one of the characters. (  ) BCbookjunky | Mar 31, 2013 | Review from The Book Wheel: Y by Marjorie Celona is another one of those books that was recommended to me by Rebecca at Love at First Book, who read it upon the recommendation of Jennifer at The Relentless Reader. I was looking forward to reading it until I read on the back of the book that fans of White Oleander would love it. You see, White Oleander is the only book I have put down after reading 1/3 of it in the past decade. Call me crazy, but I hated that book. I tried to watch the movie and only made it in to about the same point that I made it into the book. So, when I read that comparison, I hesitated. As the third book blogger to come into possession of this exact copy, however, I felt that I should at least give it a chance. And I must say, Rebecca was right. The book was fantastic. It centers around a girl named Shannon who is left as a newborn at the YMCA and follows her throughout her childhood and teenage years. From foster care to adoption, Shannon struggles to belong and her story is, at times, heartbreaking. I’m not sure whether the author was adopted, but she does a fantastic job of getting into the mind of a young girl searching for who she is and where she came from. As the story progressed, I became concerned that the author would take the predictable route but was pleasantly surprised by the direction she took. It is not at all cliché and that adds to the depth and realistic tone of the story. This is a great book for all ages, but especially for anyone (adult or teen) who has been adopted and struggled with their identity. (  )1  thebookwheel | Feb 20, 2013 | Excleent book. Sad but real. It will probably end up on my best book list. I loved the people who populated this book. (  ) shazjhb | Feb 19, 2013 | And the Y is where the story begins as well - the YMCA in a town on Vancouver Island. The Y is where Shannon's mother Yula leaves her when she is a day old, wrapped in a dirty sweatshirt with a Swiss Army knife as her legacy. Shannon grows up being tossed to one foster home to another, neglected, abused and never knowing where she will be next. The book is very heartfelt and hard to read at times thinking a baby grew up into a system that really failed her in ever way. It is a story that will make you cry and feel like this can't be happening to Shannon. No hope or love for her growing up really being on her own. It is sad to think she never really had any peace in her life even after finding her real mother. Very well written and a must read with a box of tissues by your side. I was given this book from GoodReads. ( ) MaryAnn12 | Jan 19, 2013 |
 The backstory about Shannon’s parents is told in alternating chapters with Shannon’s story. Celona weaves in their history, leaving readers guessing as much as Shannon is guessing. It’s a skilful storytelling tactic, and the two stories race to a well-paced peak at the end of the book. With any mystery in life there is a question: is it better to know or not to know? Celona’s book explores that question with grace, wit and insight. She’s a talented writer and this is a well-written story that is both sad and heartwarming. Once readers meet Shannon and read about her truth, they are unlikely to forget her.  One of the strongest aspects of the novel is its exploration of how memory works, and how people misremember or block traumatic events as a form of self-protection...Though the trajectory of Shannon’s life story is upward and Yula’s is downward, Celona has nevertheless infused Yula’s more deliberately paced passages with enough depth and emotion to leave the reader invested in her. When the two stories finally meet, the novel becomes a real tear-jerker. Yula’s story is enthralling – arguably more so than Shannon’s – which makes it hard to let go of as Celona summarily skips over the 17 years in Yula’s life after she abandoned Shannon. In the final analysis, Y is an uneven novel about the interplay of chance and choice in our lives. We are born in a certain place, to certain people, but the choices we make later in life are our own. A first novel by West Coast writer Marjorie Celona, Y, fits resonantly into the category of orphan hero novels: a newborn, wrapped in her mother’s sweatshirt, is left at the doors of the YMCA one early morning. The foundling is bounced from one family to another until she is finally adopted by a cleaning woman of great empathy, Miranda. Miranda is a single mother bringing up her own daughter Lydia-Rose but is willing to open her heart to Shannon, a small girl with candy floss hair and a strabismic eye....Y was lauded for months before its publishing date. One must take that with a grain of salt. This isn’t Dickens or Montgomery . . . yet. But it is a splendid start for a first novelist who can create characters with many of the qualities of a brave Oliver Twist or an independent Anne Shirley. According to the ethos of this novel, then, the road to salvation is friendship and giving distressed people autonomy and learning to ride a bike — Vaughn instructs Shannon — and to express feelings. After listening to Lydia-Rose’s resentments regarding Shannon, the latter comments, “None of these things has ever been said. But once they are, I realize I’m not holding on to any pain from the past anymore.” There are other tips for mental hygiene. Whether they are adequate to meet the needs of grown-up foundlings, the reader may decide. The novel remains engrossing, in any case. Somehow the author makes Shannon, who would be a pain in real life, not a pain for the reader, no doubt partly because evil is convincingly evoked in the novel and we, as spectators, naturally want the relatively innocent to be spared. In Y, her stunning debut novel, Marjorie Celona has created a world so rich and so full that every line merely seems to confirm something that has already happened. In saying so, I don’t mean to imply that her prose is predictable, but rather that it has an inevitable or ineluctable quality, a cohesion twinned with the unexpected and amazing. This is a novel that demands willing suspension of disbelief at points. But the challenge to the reader is richly rewarded...This is a novel about connections and about relationships, causal and otherwise. Despite the picaresque nature of the plot, Shannon shakes off her status as a picaro by the novel’s end. It is not surprising that she is changed by the events of her life and their recounting. The real joy is that the reader may be as well.
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A foster child who has been shuffled through the system after being abandoned at the YMCA as a baby wonders about her birth family and the reasons she was given up, questions that lead to the tragic story of her flawed and desperate mother.
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