Marina Endicott

Apparently set in the 1990s, this novel offers a glimpse into the life of the partner of an RCMP constable. It focuses on Julia Carey, a former dramaturge who moves from Saskatchewan with her significant—taciturn—other, Hardy, to Medway, a town north of Edmonton in rural Alberta. Previously a sports journalist, Hardy has recently undergone training with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We’re told his father had been a member of the force, but it’s not at all clear why Hardy, an show more older recruit, decided to make such a drastic career change.

When the couple first move to Medway, they quickly learn of a young constable’s suicide a few years before. Then, not too far into Hardy’s posting, a fellow he trained with at the Academy in Regina comes to stay with him and Julia for a two-week stress leave. Soon enough it becomes evident that police work is taking a toll on Hardy as well. He becomes, “opaque, exhausted, often impatient, or just bleak in mind,” increasingly visited by “dark moods and irritability,” and eventually incapacitated by PTSD. The novel is a first-person account of Julia’s perceptions and experiences.

During her early days in Medway, Julia fills in for a month at The Observer, the town’s local paper, when Catherine, its editor, takes her annual summer holiday. Julia herself will end up becoming the paper’s editor when Catherine moves on. However, the initial connection with the editor is a valuable one. Having lived in Medway her whole life, she has her finger on the pulse of the town and can fill the newcomer in on local happenings, criminal and otherwise. This is the only way Julia is able to learn about the difficult cases tight-lipped Hardy has been working on—cases that are obviously causing him significant distress and marked changes in behaviour. When her stint at the paper is up, Julia is briefly employed as a substitute teacher at the local high school. Lacking certification, she’s paid a pittance for emotionally draining work. Nevertheless, it offers her further insight into the community. Not long after that, having reconciled herself to infertility, she’s surprised to learn she’s pregnant. Hardy’s response to the news is not the anticipated joyous one. His only remark: He won’t be able to quit his job. No, he won’t, and it costs all of them, as the novel will show.

Overall, THE OBSERVER is a meandering and modest book. It is replete with mundane details of rural and domestic life (barbecues and get-togethers and the names of everyone in attendance) as well as plentiful gossipy information about the lives of locals (including the young widow of the constable who committed suicide, a beekeeper, and Johnny Mair, a volatile and often violent drunk, who is perpetually in trouble with the law). The novel has a very large cast of characters, most only superficially sketched. It’s hard to keep their identities straight. There’s also an overabundance of insignificant events reported on in consistently pedestrian prose. Rather than be given carte blanche to itemize seemingly every single happening, the author should have been taken in hand by her editor and advised to describe only the few most telling incidents.

In the end, I can’t recommend this novel. To me it read like an uninspired memoir or a tidied-up, emotionally flat personal journal—significant for the writer, maybe, but much less so for the reader. I was mostly very, very bored. I made it to the end, but just barely. To be clear: the book isn’t terrible. It’s accessible, and it does offer insight into what life is like for the wives and partners of first responders. The problem is that the whole thing just goes on far too long. Less would really have been so much more. show less

Good to a Fault is a story about a woman who feels stuck in an unfulfilling life after the death of her parents. Forty-three years old and alone, Clara yearns to do some good in the world, to help others, but also, more fundamentally, to connect with them. Ironically, it is a car crash that jolts her out of her rut: in an effort to do the right thing (she was technically at fault), she finds herself inviting the family to stay in her home while the mother receives treatment for cancer. This show more novel examines what it means to be good in today’s world, what we owe each other as human beings and the price of charity.

I loved the way this book is written, both its language and its structure. Although it is most often told from Clara’s point of view, the novel also shifts to the points of view of several other characters including Darlene, the oldest of the three children; her mother, Lorraine; and Paul, Clara’s priest. Endicott gets into the heads of each of these characters, revealing their thoughts and motivations. Darlene (aka Dolly) was one of my favourite characters—she is first introduced (through Clara’s eyes) with this description: “The little girl sitting on the pavement looked almost happy, as if her pinched face had relaxed now that some dangerous thing had actually happened” (p. 8). Dolly’s life changes dramatically as a result of staying with Clara.

I also loved the fact that each chapter is almost a story unto itself (and each has a title). Although in one sense not much happens in this book, there is a quiet intensity about it that completely drew me in. When I first got the book and read Elizabeth Hay’s blurb on the cover (“A wise and searching novel about the fine line between being useful and being used”), I was afraid this meant the novel was going to be about a well-meaning but misguided woman who is taken advantage of by a downtrodden and desperate family. In actual fact, this book is a much more generous, complex and surprising story than that.

A slightly different version of this review can be found on my blog, she reads and reads. show less

Open Arms, Marina Endicott’s beguiling debut novel, chronicles the unsettled early years of Bessie Smith Connolly, from childhood to young adulthood. The source of her troubles and the focus of much of Bessie’s angst is her impulsive, beautiful, unreliable mother Isabel, who was very young herself when Bessie was born. To add to her chaotic upbringing, Bessie’s father, Patrick, an award-winning poet, left Isabel and his daughter in pursuit of his muse, subsequently marrying twice more. show more When Bessie was small, her mother was picked up in a drug bust and ended up serving time in prison. Bessie was raised in Nova Scotia by Isabel’s parents, a time she recalls fondly as idyllic, filled with love and, given her background, uncharacteristically stable. However, when we meet her the placid years are behind her and Bessie, in her teens and following the death of her grandfather, is living in Saskatoon with her mother. Isabel shares a house with Katherine, Patrick’s second ex-wife, and brings in money with odd jobs and by singing at a local bar. The novel is constructed in three sections. “With the Band” is set in Saskatoon and draws a vivid portrait of Isabel’s fluid moods and capricious nature as she takes up with a much younger man and seems to go out of her way to avoid the messy complications that making an emotional commitment to her daughter would entail. In the second section, “The Giant Doreen,” Bessie and her younger half-sister Irene, Katherine and Patrick’s daughter, travel to British Columbia to stay with Patrick and current wife Doreen, the dramatic complication being that Patrick is absent and Doreen is pregnant and on the verge of giving birth. The final section, “To the Top of the World,” is constructed as a quest, as Bessie (now in her 20s) and her grandmother chase across country after Isabel, who is moving in a seemingly random fashion from place to place, involved in a personal quest of her own and, as usual, giving no thought to anyone else’s wishes or needs. Open Arms is in many respects a meditation on motherhood: its various forms, the pain and joy, the push and pull, the unrealistic expectations, the limits on what some woman are able or willing to give. The women we meet in these pages are uniformly strong and courageous, used to hard knocks, accustomed to picking up the pieces left behind by their men and carving out an independent path in the world. Their story is a captivating one, emotionally persuasive and dramatically resonant. Bessie Smith is an endearing narrator who relates events in a clear, rational voice, pulling no punches, telling it like it is. The ending, where we witness the author’s hand somewhat obviously at work, might seem a bit convenient. But this does not change the fact that fans of Endicott’s later novels who might have missed or overlooked this book will find much to enjoy here. It can also be stated with something close to certainty that anyone who appreciates fiction that features strong female characters will find that Open Arms, written with grace, wit and confidence, is well worth seeking out. show less

When I signed up for The Great Canadian Reading Challenge the first Canadian author that came to mind was Marina Endicott as I had previously read and enjoyed Good to a Fault and The Little Shadows. The Observer is the author’s most recent novel, a fictionalised account of the time she spent in rural Alberta with her husband, a RCMP officer.

In the Observer, Julia Carey accompanies her partner, Hardy, to the tiny town of Medway as he begins a new career as a RCMP officer. Julia, a show more dramaturge and playwright, is prepared to make what she can of their new life in support of Hardy, but she’s an outsider, and struggles with her new surroundings.

A position, at first temporary and then permanent, as the editor of Medway’s local weekly newspaper, The Observer, provides Julia insight into her new community, and Hardy’s role in it. But as Julia slowly finds her feet, widening her social circle, Hardy begins to stumble, increasingly weighed down by the endless demands and tragedy of his work.

In between Julia’s mundane reportage of daily domestic life, and her observations of the community joys, sorrows, and secrets, Endicott explores the impact of police work on not only the serving member, but their families and relationships. It’s a story delivered with compassion despite the somewhat flat affect, with themes such as commitment, sacrifice, trauma and, belonging, prominent.

This is a slow paced book, but there is an undercurrent of tension that sustains it. The prose is spare but not simplistic.

As I was unaware of the connection between this book and the tragic deaths of four RCMP Constables in Mayerthorpe, AB in 2005 it perhaps didn’t have the impact for me that it might for others, but overall The Observer is a lovely, quiet novel. show less